


The Hidden Lineage

by SaltyRobotFriend



Series: Heirs to the Rocky Throne [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anachronisms, Excessive use of flashbacks, Gen, I don't actually know what I'm doing bear with me, I'm feeling confident enough to write a multi chapter thing, Julia Burnsides Lives, Learning to trust people even though you have reasons to trust no one, Lost Heirs, Lost Royalty, Multi, No player handbooks we make up spells and abilities as the plot demands like men, Other moments of attempted and successful murder, Roaring 20s aesthetic, attempted filicide in the first chapter but they're grown up in the next, but that's part of TAZ:B's brand so I don't think that's gonna suprise anyone, excessive product placement, gods help me, preemptive archive warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-05-19 01:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 32,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14864132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltyRobotFriend/pseuds/SaltyRobotFriend
Summary: The Queen of Faerun has found her long lost niece and nephew, her last living heirs, and she sends her best team out to find them and bring them home before her enemies do. But while finding the twins was tough, getting them to trust these strangers long enough to get them back is gonna be even harder, since they’ve had to deal with people trying to kill them all their long elven lives and that tends to create feelings of paranoia in a person.





	1. Prolouge

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. I got some kudos on the other two scenes I posted, so I figured, "Why not write a multi chapter thing?" Gods help me.  
> Don't expect a consistent schedule here kids. Like I know how it's gonna end but I don't know how we're gonna get there. Also... real life...  
> Special thanks to Glowbat on Tumblr for this (https://glowbat.tumblr.com/post/173056469311/havent-slept-for-twoish-days-but-i-needed-to). I needed to make that real in my head so I wrote this.

“Taako! Taako, wake up!”

He did, sorta, stirring ruefully and burying himself further in his blankets to get away from his sister.

“Taako, I’m serious!” Lup whisper-screamed as she yanked the quilt off of him and pulled him to his feet. She shushed him when he protested. “Do you hear that?”

He strained his ears. He heard the breeze and the sound of stickly shrubbery scratching the walls of their house.

“Hear what?” he demanded, rubbing his eyes.

“There’s people outside!” said Lup frantically. “I think they’re trying to get in!”

Taako looked across the dark cabin, which they had thoroughly littered with empty juice boxes and go-gurt tubes, to the bed on the wall opposite from theirs. It was still empty, as it had been the whole day before.

“Is it mom?” he asked.

“I know what mom sounds like, dummy!” she said, nearly yelling, but they both fell silent when they heard a click from the door, and someone jimmying the lock, then jiggling the still locked doornob, and trying the lock again. Taako looked back at Lup, who was generally the go-getter of the two of them, but was clearly freaking out now. He looked between her and the door, now feeling the weight of the situation. They crept toward the window next to the door, Taako attached to Lup’s arm, and Carefully pulled the curtain aside. A thin sliver of moonlight lit up the room, and outside of their door were two humanoid strangers who’s faces were obscured by black dust masks and goggles. They had knives sheathed on their thighs.

Lup jumped back, slamming into Taako.

“We’ve gotta hide!” she said, and she pulled him to the bed and they both hid underneath it. The dust ruffle kept them covered. The lock clicked and the door creaked open. They barely heard the strangers enter, but saw their shoes travel silently across the floor from under the dust ruffle. They didn’t take anything, they didn’t even approach the silverware drawers, didn’t move towards the shiny odds and ends that were scattered around the cabin, didn’t touch anything until they reached the beds the twins were sleeping in minutes ago. They pulled the covers away, checked under the beds and didn’t find whatever, or rather, _whoever_ , they were looking for.

Taako clapped a hand over his mouth, but he couldn’t suppress his hyperventilating. They heard him, and they swiftly made their way to their hiding place. The twins held their breath as the intruders just stopped right in front of them. One of them crouched. The twins backed against the wall, trying to stay out of their reach. One of them lifted the dust ruffle. Their exposed eyes shown like a cat’s in the dark. A hand flew at them, grabbing Taako by the scruff and dragging him, and Lup as she tried to hold onto him, out from under the bed. The accomplice wrenched Lup away from her brother. She thrust a hand swathed in small but hot flames at their face, and they reared back screaming and dropped Lup to the floor as they recoiled.

The second, clearly no longer interested in keeping quiet, exclaimed “What the fuck?” as Taako struggled to get out from under their weight. A stiletto was raised over his head, glinting lethally in the dim light of the cabin. Taako managed to wrench his assailants hand away, snapping a finger from it’s socket in the process. The assassin screamed, and Taako managed to wriggle out from under them right before they plunged their stiletto into the spot he had just occupied. Something grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to his feet, and then Lup dragged him through the open door as the assassins recovered. The twins ran as fast as their tiny legs could handle, but their attackers were faster. Right as they caught up with the twins the air in front of them combusted, Lup yelled, and the dry ambrosia at their feet was set ablaze. The twins narrowly escaped getting caught in the blaze, though the spell burned Lup’s hands, but the assassins weren't as lucky.

Taako was now dragging Lup into a run as she clutched her singed hands to her chest. They didn’t dare turn around. They heard no footfalls but their own. They only heard the bushes catching fire and the grinding of sand and rocks beneath their feet as they escaped.

They didn’t backtrack. They didn’t stop moving away from their home for as long as they could make themselves. When they finally wore themselves out they took shelter under a rock until the scorching sun passed over them. And when they tried to find their way back, they couldn’t.

They would never hear from their mother again, either.


	2. Decent Luck, All Things Considered

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TIL that Margarita can also be a name for people. I mean my source for this is Behindthename.com but fuck it, I'm using (a short form of) it here.  
> If this chapter seems a tad boring, it's because I'm working on the whole "building up tension before an action sequence" thing. Another one of my WIPs is currently pretty heavy on action sequences and I'm trying to work on pacing in my long forms.

It was about 8 am. There were a few people out on their way to work, or, like Taako and Lup, setting up shop for the wave of tourists that tended to start at around the 10:15 mark. It was already pretty bright out, leaving any would be assassin or kidnapper with very few places to hide and stake the twins out. Lup herself wasn’t really hot on spending any amount of time in a tourist trap like Glamour Springs, where any assassin or kidnapper worth their salt could just hide in the crowd as easily as they hide in the shadows at night, and the food truck they now ran could draw some unwanted attention but Taako had insisted on getting it.

“I mean, it’s not like laying low and hopping from one gig to the next has helped us any,” he had pointed out when he was trying to get her to buy the giant station wagon they now rolled around in. She couldn’t disagree with him on that. Before getting this truck, they could at best get to sleep in a roach and bed bug infested inn and got cheated out of any monetary payment that would be genuinely helpful, at worst they spent a few days with an adventuring party who had only befriended them just to turn them into whatever despot had put a bounty on their head. At least now they didn’t have to put their security in a stranger’s hands, though it was taking a bit longer just to break even on the truck than Taako had thought it would take. If nothing else, a day or two working out the back of their food truck here meant more money to spend on a room in a more out of the way town.

Lup put up the awning tiredly, keeping one eye on her surroundings as she did so. To say nothing seemed out of the ordinary wouldn’t be saying much, since after 100 years and hundreds of attempts on their lives, attempted kidnappings, near miss inductions into cults and the like, the twins’ view of ‘ordinary’ was a bit askew. Lup just hadn’t seen anyone that raised the alarm bells in her head yet. But it was still early, and anything was possible. She smelled wood burning as Taako fired up the stove.

“Jeez,” he said, she turned to look up at him. He was leaning on the counter of the giant window looking down at her sympathetically, she was the only one he was really open and showed actual concern to. Lup hadn’t realized she had slumped against the post as she planted it into the ground. “Did you even sleep last night?” She hadn’t even changed out of the shift and britches she wore the day before. Her hair was not so much in a bob at this point but was just a fire-colored mess of bed head. Taako also looked a little rough in comparison to his usual look. The plain drop waist dress and the stained apron were normal for him, but instead of braiding his pale hair he just threw it back into a messy bun, and while he usually went full smokey eyes and red lipstick, today he hadn’t bothered with any makeup.

“I meditated,” she said defensively, pushing herself away from the post. She added quietly, trying not to make A Thing out of it, “You were having a night terror though, didn’t get the most out of it.” She went over and planted the opposite post in the ground.

“Right. Excellent. No one heard me and came to kill us in our vulnerable state, did they?” he asked sardonically. There was the clank of pans as he set up the various utensils they had collected over the years.

“Nah. Just had to chase off this human lady who had just come over to see what the situation was.”

“How nice. Anyway, any thoughts on today’s special?” he asked, dismissing everything that was said before that, like he usually did. He rattled off a few suggestions, but Lup was more focused on what was outside of their car. That was the pattern they fell into. Taako made sure they met ends meet, Lup made sure they stayed alive.

Lup put the sign up beside the service window. It read Sizzle it Up (with Taako)! In Taako’s brightly colored script as if it was a movie poster. He had also wrote down a bunch of dumb puns that had to be painted over for, you know, the menu. The flames around the edges were Lup’s idea, though they were both equally responsible for the excessive amounts of glitter that had been packed on and constantly flaked off.

The hours passed by without incident, but that didn’t calm the twins down any. Extended periods of nothing happening tended to put the twins on edge even more. When the lunch rush came, Lup’s attention was split between handling the money and taking orders, and analyzing everyone in the area for ill intent.

She was barely aware of the show Taako was putting on as he filled the orders. Lup caught the eyes of an older Dwarven man in a loud floral shirt and with a mess of flowers braided into his beard who was just kind of chilling in the crowd. He waved cordially at her, and she just blinked at him before turning back to an almost suspiciously normal looking half elf in front of her.

She took an order from a human woman who had neglected to remove Governor Kalen’s crest from herself. The twins have run into a few of his friends before.

A dark skinned human woman and a small boy stood a ways back, speaking into a stone of farspeech and looking between their car and something the kid was holding in his hand. They didn’t even approach their truck.

Lup caught a drow lurking nearby and stared him down, and he tried to walk away as if he wasn’t creeping on them just now. When she turned her attention back to the orc woman in front of her, the orc asked if everything was alright, seeming genuinely concerned. Lup went back into customer service mode and dismissed the question with a cheery “No, I’m doing alright. You?” Once she had taken her order the orc had a short conversation with a human man roughly her size.

They served a halfling, of all things, who had so much necrotic energy rolling off of them they might as well have been wearing a sign that says ‘I’m with the cult of Vecna (shhhhhh)’. She sensed a similar energy from a heavyset human man in glasses who left a generous tip, though his energy was a lot more subtle. The last really notable person she saw during the lunch rush was another high elf who, for some reason, said ‘Long live the queen,’ instead of ‘Have a nice day’ or something, and then chuckled at his own ominous farewell.

At the same time, across the country, Queen Ceresel sat slumped over her desk, allowing herself a few minutes of relief. Her tea sat untouched and had gone cold. From a portrait on the wall, her late brother, Dioner, watched, his face frozen in a serious expression that was uncharacteristic for him, he just couldn’t hold his shit-eating grin long enough for the artist to capture it. His dissapeared wife stood next to him. That painting was over a hundred years old and was starting to turn yellow and crack, but she still remembered the artist telling Rita to stop crossing her eyes as he worked.

 _Soon,_ Ceresel thought, taking a breath and straightening up. They weren't out of the woods yet, and she still had a country to run while her people where getting her niece and nephew back.

✧*:･ﾟ✧

In the 1-4 pm lull, the twins filled maybe one order every half hour and spent most of the time cleaning up. Lup was back to scrutinizing every tree and bush for anything that might be hiding in them as she picked up the trash around their truck, and taking a second look at the other vendors in the area, but, surprisingly, finding nothing particularly off about them.

“Hey Taako, I wanna do a creeper sweep. Will you be good on your own for a second?” she asked.

“Is this about that one guy who kinda threatened you when we filled his order?” Taako asked.

“More about who he could be rolling with,” Lup replied. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yeah, there were some straight up fucking weirdos today. I caught two necromancers, one of Kalen’s thugs, and a handful of lurkers, I don’t know who they’re with but they’re definitely gonna come at us in the night.” Taako leaned against the counter, nonchalantly picking at the sauce that had gotten under his nails. “Sorry for making you think about your personal safety and all,” Lup snarked.

“Nah dog, I appreciate the constant reminders that we could die at any moment,” Taako sassed back. There was a long, tense silence, and then Taako huffed and said; “Yeah, alright. Go check it out, but don’t take too long, alright?”

“Of course,” she said, giving her brother a boop on the nose. She grabbed a red umbrella she always kept in arms reach and exited the truck, walking slowly and scanning the area as she went.

Taako turned back to his kitchen. Every surface now had a fine coating of grease he needed to scrape off or hose down before the next wave, but the first thing he did was wash off his favored kitchen knife and holster it on his hip next to his wand. If he was going to be by himself for any length of time, he needed to make sure he could defend himself. He was at least grown up enough to realize that if anyone Lup had mentioned decided to pay him a visit, he couldn’t just ignore them out of existence.


	3. Making Fun of Death’s Fake Accent as a Form of Self-Care

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone. Thanks for all the comments and kudos you've left so far, it's been really encouraging!  
> BTW: When I tagged "No player handbooks.." I meant that I'd cherrypick worldbuilding stuff from the 4 and 5e wikis but would wing it in terms of magic attacks and stuff.  
> There's some worldbuilding specific to this story hinted at in this chapter but it's not a deep dive, mostly because I haven't fully figured out how this world works before writing it. Whoops.  
> Changed the archive warnings to "Graphic depictions of violence" for characters dying but getting resurrected soon after.

Lup patrolled the blocks surrounding the park they were set up in, snaking through the crowds and into alleyways that were already growing dark in the late afternoon. The streets were still crowded with unassuming people, tourist families, bar crawling locals, that sort of thing. She searched the crowds and could not find any of the suspicious people she had seen before, which made sense, why would they hang out around their targets instead of taking them out and getting away? She reached out with her arcane senses and still didn’t find anything that was cause for alarm.

Alright. Maybe her and Taako had a little more time to make some more money before packing up and leaving.

She was almost finished with her circle when she looked into a storefront and saw a clump of familiar faces seated at a window; the flower dwarf, the dark skinned woman and the kid, the muscular human man and orc woman, and the nerd who tipped generously. There was a dragonborn with her as well, one who was probably in the vicinity with them but had the good sense to stay out of Lup’s sight. They were huddled over something at their table. She cast her magic eyes on them, and again picked up faint necrotic and divination magic, stronger divine energy and hints of some other magics she didn’t recognize.

 _Alright_ , Lup noted. _That’s one group we have to worry about. We can probably handle the muscle of the group._

_Why the fuck do they have a 12 year old with them?_

She cut her patrol off there and started back towards their truck. She at least needed to get back to her brother before anyone else did.

She stopped short when she felt the radiation of primal energy. She could faintly sense it, like it was coming from far away, but it was strong enough to give her pause. She silently cursed their many, many, countless enemies that would not just leave them the fuck alone. She stood there for a second, not sure whether to go after whoever was channeling that magic and take them out now, or get back to Taako before someone else does.

Lup groaned loudly as she turned and went after the source of the energy. Neither option was good, but she figured they’d be better off if she took out Mx. Wild Magic before they’re fully charged.

As she moved through the allies she got more and more nervous. She couldn’t pinpoint their location with her arcane sense and just kept weaving through the allies thinking they had to be around this next corner, and then turning one and leveling her umbrestaff at nothing, all the while the primal magic was getting more and more intense. She kept searching through the spiderweb of ever darkening allies, straying much farther from her brother than she intended, but leaving this mage alone could be a fatal mistake on her part, so she kept on following it like the twins would chase pinpoints of light through a dense forest. As she got closer the air started to buzz with the energy. This was gonna get ugly.

Lup turned what had to be the hundredth flipping corner and found the source of the magic. Waiting on one knee in the alleyway was a longtooth shifter in thick hide armor, thorny vines emanated from where he knelt and covered the walls, and the great sword in his hand looked like it had been banged up and chewed on by a few giant monsters. When he saw her, he grinned, and the thorny vines closed in around them as he got to his feet and lifted his massive sword. Lup dropped into a fighting stance in turn, spinning her umbrestaff in an aggressive flourish. But then the shadows took shape out of the corner of her eye, and two _more_ bad guys took shape behind her. the shifter halted his approach when he saw them, and the three assailants stopped and looked at each other, weapons raised and ready to strike. The bramble closed off the way out in front of and behind them.

“Uhh,” said one of the rouges from behind a very on the nose skeleton mask, “What’s up Greenwarden trash?” Lup had to question his decision to immediately insult the man made of sharp bits and channeling nature magic to grow even more sharp things, but if it took the attention off of her…

“That’s pretty rich calling _us_ trash,” said Mr Greenwaden Trash.

“Hey, look,” said the Tabaxi next to the skull mask man, “let’s not turn this into a thing, ‘kay? We’re just here to kill he and her brother and leave.”

“Yeah? Who’s paying you?” the shifter crept closer, actually getting between Lup, the Tabaxi and skull boy. Lup turned to the thorns that were encasing all of them. “All that gold ain’t gonna do you any good once the mountains of man gets reclaimed by the earth.”

“I mean, does it matter, we all want...” the rest of what he said was unintelligible, but then again Lup was only half listening to make sure the attention wasn’t on her as she charged up to burn a hole the thick wall of thorns (“And if I die how are you gonna get out?” said the shifter, probably gesturing towards the bramble).

Lup let loose a fireball blasted a hole through the bramble, leaping through it as the shifter almost immediately started channeling again. He almost ensnared her legs, but she kicked and burned her way out of the thorn’s grasp. They cut deep gouges into her boots but caused her no real damage. She rounded on the plants, raising her hand and igniting the air, incinerating the vines as they opened up and launched at her in the shape of many grasping hands. The whole mess of bramble the shifter created went up in a bright burst of flame. Lup spun on her heel she ran back for the food truck deciding it wouldn’t be a great idea for her to hang around and fight.

She _tried_ to go back to the truck, anyway. She hadn’t noticed how freaking dark it had gotten until now. The sky was black, and the light cast from her flames cast sharp shadows in the alley that moved and flickered in a disorienting manner. She ran, but the alleyways all looked the same and she must have circled back on her attackers at some point, rounding a corner and nearly running into their backsides. She scrambled up a fire escape onto the roof of an adjacent building, reoriented herself in the direction of the park and ran for it along the rooftops, her attackers giving chase.

“Hey, Lup, you there?!” came Taako’s frantic voice from a stone Lup wore on her wrist. For the second he was talking she thought she also heard something clashing against metal walls.

“Taako?! What’s happening?” she yelled back into the stone of farspeech. One of the assassins sprang up and lunged at her. Lup dodged and kicked him over the edge. He immediately melted back into the shadows.

There was another crash and the sound of Taako getting thrown into something by the force. “Ugh! Bear! Bear is happening!”

Back in the truck, Taako was trying to stay standing as a massive grizzly bear pummeled the station wagon and either tried to either tear through the metal or knock it over. There was a defining screech of metal being torn to shreds as it dragged it’s claws through the body of the truck. He clutched his stone of farspeech in his hand as his other arm gripped the sink.

“Where are you right now?!” he yelled. A gunshot, the roar of flame and the sound of running feet and panting came from the stone.

“In a fight!” she yelled. “Just hold on until I get there!” The bear must have thrown it’s full weight into the truck, as Taako lost his grip on the sink and flew into the wall and then to the floor. He got his feet under him and dove to the cab, but as he started it up the wagon was knocked onto it’s side. The next thing he knew the bear smashed through the window and lunged at Taako, trying to take a bite out of him, but the elf managed to stay just out of its reach. Taako groped at his hip, and thankfully both the wand and the knife were still there. He drew the wand and shot a freezing spell from the hip at the bears face. The beast froze over quickly, rearing back enough to give Taako some space, but he couldn’t draw his head out of the window before he froze over. Taako took a second to catch his breath and looked around through the cracked windshield. Everyone who was in the park a minute ago had fled from the rampaging bear, with the exception of a half elf, who he’d seen earlier that day and thought nothing of. She was now holding a pine wood staff, and was now looking down at Taako like he was the asshole.

“You better not have killed my bear,” she said, pointing her staff at Taako, the tip emitted a green and gold light, and Taako could feel the ground shifting beneath him. He shot a volley of magic missiles at her. They punched through the already cracked windshield and slammed her in the chest, giving Taako a few seconds to crawl out of there and break into a run.

But he didn’t get very far before a shot rang out, and something tore through his chest and knocked him to the ground.

It took him a second to process what had happened. Pain spiked in his chest as he gasped for air. He looked around for the shooter, but only saw the druid getting back on her feet and casting a spell on the now thawing bear. Taako threw up a thick dome of ice, and not a moment too soon, as another bullet embedded itself in the ice.

“Sis,” he said into the stone of farspeech, which he had miraculously kept a hold of the whole time. “I’ve been shot.”

Lup stopped in her tracks. The umbrella had now been crammed into her belt, as she had become more concerned with getting back to the truck than with getting rid of the attackers behind her. The hand not attached to the stone of farspeech was enveloped in flame.

“You’ve _what!?”_

“Someone shot me! Where the fuck are you?!”

“I’m-"

The shadows took shape again, and Lup didn’t wait for them to become a person before lobbing a fireball at it. The tabaxi shrieked as he was engulfed in flame. There was a battle cry behind her, and she saw the shifter flying through the air and she jumped out of the way before he plunged his sword into the ground where she was a second ago. She started channeling another spell. Heat rolled off of her in waves and the shifter ditched the sword and dove at her with his claws up. She dodged again, yelping as she took a deep slash across her shoulder. Undeterred, she slammed her magic at him through her palm, and the shifter was immolated. He hit the floor, now reduced to charred meat.

“Taako!” she yelled into her stone, “I’m on my way, just hold on!”

Just then another body slammed into her from behind, and the cold steel of a knife was jammed into her back. She swayed, but she didn’t fall down as skull face man backed off and withdrew his blade. She turned on him, grabbing him by the collar before he could get out of her reach, and she molded the flames in her hand into a blade once again and plunged it into his stomach right as he tried to dissolve back into the shadows. He instead collapsed to the floor as Lup did, now lightheaded and dripping with her own blood. She drew the umbrestaff and used it as a crutch to get to her feet, leaning against the wall for support as she dragged herself forward.

“I’m-” she panted, “I’m on my way.” She forced herself to keep walking, even as she was blacking out, even as her legs were threatening to give out from underneath her.

The ice above Taako cracked. He heard the infuriated roar of that freshly thawed fucking bear. He tried to move to avoid the vines that were exploding from the ground to grab him, but he had left himself very little space to move when he built this ice tomb for himself. One hand was trying fruitlessly to keep the blood inside of him, the other was holding the stone of farspeech to his ear. He could barely hear his sister’s pained, slurred speech over the crash of claws against ice and the angry roar of a vengeful animal.

Lup kept saying; “I’m on my way,” and “Hold on.”

The ice dome cracked, and before the thing could collapse in on him, Taako dispersed it and tried to crawl away, but by this time the vines had ensnared his legs. He screamed as claws sunk into his chest. He leveled his wand at the bear and the first spell he thought of, fireball, at it, and that at least got the bear off of him, but then the vines had entangled all of his limbs and held him where he lay. He was shot again, and the bear rounded on him once more. He was no longer in his own body. He was barely aware of white light shielding his body as the bear took another swipe at him, the sound of Lup gasping for air through the stone of farspeech, or of the vines suddenly falling away as the druid yelled in the background. The last thing he was aware of was someone running head on into the bear.

In an alley blocks away, Lup finally collapsed, head foggy and legs weak from blood loss. She tried to pull herself forward with her hands, but she was passing out. At this point she couldn’t even lift her head at the sound of someone _else_ running toward her. She was vaguely aware of them kneeling next to her and calling to their partner for help.

She couldn’t be bothered at this point. She fucked up. She ran into a fight and now both herself and her brother were dead because of it. She hoped whoever _this_ was was fucking satisfied with whatever reward they were gonna get out of her.

✧*:･ﾟ✧ 

Lup woke up, sort of. She was no longer in pain, although that might’ve been because she didn’t really feel anything. She sat up, not even feeling the weight of her body as she did so, because her soul had detached itself from it, and she stared down at her own body, which was caked in what she knew to be her own blood. She saw Taako laying next to her in the same sad state. His soul lifted out of his body, glowing a faint blue and was as blurry as their surroundings, which where now cast in dismal splotches of black, white and gray. He looked at her in with, for lack of a better word, dead eyes, and shrugged. All he said was; “Well, fuck.”

If Lup still had lungs, she would’ve sighed. She laid back down, clipping into her own body but not reconnecting with it in any way. She turned her head away, to the indistinct figures that surrounded them.

“Sorry, bro.”

They said nothing else. There wasn’t really much of a point now. The blurs around them were starting to take shape but neither of the twins cared to take notice. Nothing left to do now but wait for the reaper to come and take them away from this stink planet.

But when they felt it, the divine energy of The Raven Queen, which felt like morning mist rising from the grass, Lup was compelled to get back up and face death. She didn’t know what she was gonna say, the laws of life and death were absolute, but she needed to fix this. They turned to the reaper, expecting to see some raggedy, ghostly or skeletal figure, but saw an ageless and otherworldly, but otherwise chill human looking man wearing an antique-looking suit and a feathered half-cape. He’d even braided some of his locs into a halo braid just to give the whole thing more of an Angel of Death vibe.

“Oi, don’t worry about me,” the reaper said, in just the worst fake accent either twin has ever heard, “I’m just hangin’ about in case the resurrection fails.”

The twins stared at him, unresponsive, for a whole second, and despite themselves both burst into a fit of laughter. The grim reaper looked a little self-conscious.

“Holy shit dude,” Taako was the first to collect himself. “Thank you for that. In case you couldn’t tell we’ve been having a rough day and that cheered me right up.”

“...What did?” the reaper asked, not really used to hearing ‘that cheered me up’ from anyone who had just died, though he usually tried to maintain a calm presence when escorting a normal mortal soul to the astral plane.

“Oh my god, really,” giggled Lup, “you’re gonna keep that accent up?” The reaper looked affronted.

“Yes??” he retorted, “I am going to keep my natural speaking voice up?” His accent slipped into something that sounded natural in the middle of his sentence, proving he was lying.

“Really,” Lup said, managing to collect herself for a second. “You’re death, we get it, you look like a murder of crows fucked a nerd. You’re spoopy enough without trying to do every accent you hear on Fantasy BBC at once.”

“You look like if a dumpster fire was a person…” the reaper muttered back.

“Woah, ok, hold on,” Taako interjected, waving his hands at both of them. He looked at the reaper. “You have to excuse her, the whole Goth Dandy aesthetic is a good look. You know, there’s no accounting for taste.” His voice had gotten fairly deep all of a sudden. Lup recognized it as the voice he used to flirt with actual, mortal men. She cracked up all over again. She would’ve kinkshamed him mercilessly for that in any other circumstance.

“Thanks.” said the reaper, looking a little too done with their nonsense already to notice the flirting.

Lup finally stopped laughing and stood up, or, more accurately, floated into an upright position.

“Alright, I’m done,” she said, humor fading from her voice. She cast her arms out in a resigned gesture. “This is it, huh? Let’s get it over with.”

“Again, since you apparently didn’t hear the first time,” said the reaper, “I haven’t come to escort out to the astral plane _just_ yet. I’m mostly just waiting to see if this guy’s resurrection fails.” he pointed behind the twins, and when they turned around the world came more into focus. Lup recognized the beach dwarf she saw twice earlier that day. He had a hand on both twins, Lup now noticed that one was made of wood, and he appeared to be saying a prayer to whatever god he served. She found three of her friends, the dark skinned woman, the nerd, and the kid, with him. They appeared to be in a tent. Everyone looked apprehensive, and even though the kid was nervous-ticking the hardest, he seemed surprisingly calm for a kid his age around two dead people.

Lup groaned and put her face in her hands. “That’s even _worse.”_

“Sorry?” the reaper said, tilting his head. “I mean, if you aren’t willing to come back to life, I can take you-”

“Hey, hold up, man.” Taako said. “No one said we wanted to die, it’s just, we don’t know these people. At all.”

“I’m a little concerned what they want us alive for.” Lup added.

“Yeah. A little backstory; we’ve had a couple of near death experiences before, you might've seen ‘em,” the reaper shrugged as Taako spoke. He’s been on this job a while and has seen a lot of people die. If he had seen these two asshats before he wouldn’t have remembered. “We have a couple attempted murders under our belts, but we’ve also had a couple of guys who wanted to ‘adopt’ us or induct them into their cult or make us swear a blood oath to them in exchange for phenomenal cosmic power or whatever, the kind of thing you’d wanna avoid at all costs, you know?”

“I’m familiar with that sort of thing.”

“But we’re not gonna die to get away from that, I mean who would want that?”

“At this point?” Lup interjected at Taako.

“Shut up, Lup! Anyway,” he turned back to the reaper. “This is probably a weird request, but you _did_ say you were gonna wait around until the ritual was done, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, do you think _maybe,_ ” Taako had dropped back into his flirting voice, and his eyes had grown wide and he very purposefully made himself look demure, “if we get resurrected-”

“No.” said the reaper flatly.

“...maybe you could do a little bit of reaping _around_ us? If it’s not too much trouble?”

“It would be. It would absolutely be too much trouble,” the reaper insisted, looking Taako square in the eye

“Well, why not?” Lup asked. “Everyone dies, right?”

“I am a guardian of the natural order of life and death, not a hitman. If I need to kill a litch or something I’ll do that but I don’t just run around reaping souls for funsies.”

“Well, look, I’m not asking you to reap all of them,” Lup said. “I doubt the kid and the nerd are gonna be a problem but I am concerned about the orc woman and Jock Man-”

She couldn’t finish her pitch as both her and Taako felt divine energy surge through them, and once again the world was dark. They saw nothing, felt nothing, heard nothing, and didn’t even think nothing.

Lup gasped, and forced air into her lungs with great, heaving rasps. Her ears rang with the sounds of people cheering, but she couldn’t process any of it. She was freezing, and her limbs were too weak and too stiff for her to even shiver. She couldn’t even force her eyes open. It took a lot of effort on her part to even find her own hand and flex her fingers. She reached out and found another hand. Her brother’s, she realized. She could hear him coughing next to her. She grabbed onto it.

For what it’s worth, they made it out alive. For now.


	4. If They’re Lying We’ll Just Rob Them Blind as we Run Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well this chapter was inordinately hard to write :/ Anyway, thanks again to everyone who left kudos and generally encouraged me to keep writing this thing.  
> BTW: I have a headcanon that Lup kindof experimented with gender for a while before she came out as a woman but I forgot to put that into the first chapter, and I forgot ango was 10, and at this point I'm too afraid to go back and edit accordingly.

Taako and Lup were stuck in a state between awake and unconscious for a while. As the minutes crawled past they were able to take in their surroundings little by little. They felt the mattress under them, the blankets entangling their legs, and the blood that had crusted on their shirts and in their hair. They could even smell the room itself, a mix of tropical flowers and the smell of dried seawater which had soaked into everything. The cacophony of voices became more distinct. There was a round of congratulations for the healer, and a round of dunking on him for being a crappy healer in the past, which inspired a lotof confidence in the previously dead twins.

“For a second, I was worried Barry’d have to bring them back,” said the deadpan voice Lup recognized as the voice of the orc woman from before. There was some audible cringing and nervous chortling. Another one, the nerd, Lup guessed, he was the necromancer of the group, let out kind of a nervous, very airy chuckle.

“I don’t think the queen would accept that,” he, Barry? Replied.

 _Oooh, the Queen,_ thought Taako, who was now conscious enough to feel snarky about the situation. _No one’s tried_ _to connect us with the_ queen _before._ He moved to get up (he could move now!) to say that to their new captors, but his stiff muscles groaned and joints creaked with the effort of stretching and pulling his body into a seated position. He flinched when an extra set of hands grabbed him and helped him up. His hand went to his hip on reflex, and for some reason, he still had his knife on him. Even if at this point he couldn’t wrest it from it’s holster, it was very weird, or just stupid, on their part, to keep it on him.

“You alright, Taako?” said a guy in a loud, pharyngeal voice. Taako shoved him away, noting that he was a good twice his size, but the guy did back off. Lup moved next to him, and made a sound similar to floorboards creaking as she sat up. He finally pulled his eyes open, and fucking yikes, he and his sister had been torn up real bad. She was slightly less coated in brown crust than he was, but was still a bit ashen-faced. Once she was sitting up she immediately grabbed Taako and pulled him into a one armed hug as they got a better look at their new surroundings.

The tent they were in was home to lots of tropical flowers, and an illusion of a beach framed by palms was projected onto the sides. The owner of the tent was not hard to find. Lup was once again looking at the floral dwarf she kept seeing the day before. His loud floral shirt, shorts and sandals really tied in with the beachy aesthetic of the tent. The wood arm and his eyepatch made him look like some sort of dryad pirate who exclusively pillaged from vacation spots. The twins were not keen on thanking him for resurrecting them, since neither of them knew what he wanted from them. Lup looked around, turning a scrutinizing, threatening eye to everyone else in the tent. It looked like the whole gang was in here. The dwarf cleric had with him a large human man with auburn hair and dozens of scars, the orc woman who had noticed that one drow creeping on her earlier that day, and an unusually slender dragonborn, all of whom were non-magic folk, the bespectacled kid, who probably had something enchanted with divination magic on him but it was hard to tell whether he was a wizard or not, the older, heavyset nerd human in jeans, and the dark skinned woman, who Lup now noticed was wearing what appeared to be a signet ring, but she couldn’t see its seal clearly from across the tent.

The only thing she could say for sure was that these people were probably hired by some baron to get them. The dark skinned woman looked like nobility, based on the signet ring and the actual silk shirt she wore under her suit. She was probably acting as the messenger and director of this whole operation.

“You guys alright?” said the large human. In response, Lup jumped out of bed, stumbling a bit but staying on her feet as she ignited her hands.

“I can show you how alright I am!” yelled Lup. Everyone in the tent took a prudent step back but were otherwise not deterred by Lup’s aggressive show. Taako kept scanning the tent. Not only had the strangers not disarmed Taako while he was dead, they were nice enough to keep both his wand and Lup’s umbrella on the side table. He grabbed them both.

“Hey, hey, Lup, relax. No need to burn my tent down.” said the dwarf. “Your aunt sent us.”

“Sure she did,” said Taako, “is that supposed to be the queen you mentioned earlier?”

“Yes, actually,” dwarf said. “Glad we’re all on the same page here, it makes it easier for us.”

“We are _not_ on the same page,” Lup retorted. She cut her magic off, not wanting to literally burn herself out. She was still a bit shaky from the resurrection. “You think we’ll just roll with anyone who comes to us like, ‘hey, lord so-and-so is your real dad, and he sent us to bring you home’?”

“I take it people have tried the Lost Heir con on you too?” Denim Necromancy Boy asked sympathetically.

Taako ignored him. “Two questions; First, what took the queen so long to get around to trying that shit on us? and two; Why does everyone want us dead so bad?”

“Well, sir, to answer your first question,” said the kid, clearing his throat, “and ma’am, I mean no offense, the queen didn’t find out until recently that she was looking for a boy and a girl, and not twin boys.”

“Also, it’s a little difficult to track someone when they’re on the run, and other people are trying to find them, and they keep intercepting your messages, and trying to kill you or kidnap you...” the dragonborn pointed out.

“And to answer you’re second question,” the noblewoman spoke up, “ _we_ aren't trying to kill you.” She opened up her jacket, reveling a broach bearing the queen’s seal, olive branches encircling the sun. “I am Chancellor Lucretia, right hand to Queen Ceresel,” the twins gave her a sarcastic “ooooh” in reply, which was ignored, she waved to the orc woman, “this is Ranger General Kilian,” she waved through the rest of the group, introducing Magnus Burnsides, the human brick house, Merle Highchurch, the dwarf cleric, Angus McDonald, the kid, the dragonborn, Carey Fangbattle, and the nerd, Barry Bluejeans.

“Hold on, pump the breaks, Barry Bluejeans? Of what? Fucking Bluejeanshire?” Taako said incredulously.

“It’s a nickname,” Barry said dismissively. “Also, kind of off subject, but do you guys wanna wash all the blood off, or are you cool like that? ‘Cause we actually have a spa tent.”

The twins looked at their captors, hosts? With narrow eyes. Lucretia removed a pendant the twins recognized as a stone of farspeech from her neck. “If you need to ask the queen herself, here’s a direct line to her.” Neither twin took the stone.

“Angus,” said Lucretia. She pointed to a thick journal on a table on the other side of the tent. He got up and brought it to her. She flipped it open and passed Lup a photograph she plucked from it. It looked to be about as old as they were, given how grainy the image was and how orange it had turned. “Do you recognize them?”

The twins recognized the queen, since a monarch’s image tended to be up all over a land they ruled. She had jet black hair that shone even in the old, grainy photograph and pointy, even birdlike, features. But the woman on her right jumped out at them much more. Their mother was right next to the queen, dressed in elegant armor that looked like it was made more for official portraits like this than for fighting in. Her curly hair was tied up in a practical bun held in place with a stick, just like the twins remembered. The picture couldn’t capture the splatter of freckles that covered her bronze face but they knew they were there. They couldn’t recognize the guy she stood next to, but they recognized his heavy lidded eyes, they were probably amber, but in a monochrome picture it was hard to tell, and his long sharp nose as their own.

“So, umm,” said Taako, his face portraying nothing, “spa tent, huh? Fancy. I guess you’d have to have some connections in high places to afford something like that.”

“It is on loan from the queen.” Lucretia said. “She made sure you both had your own tent and some clean clothes, by the way.” She pointed to a pair of identical looking bags at the foot of the bed. The bags had typically elvish earth tones and flowing embroidery meant to imitate creeping vines. Beside them there was one overstuffed backpack with flame painted on it. It was the twins’ ‘Oh Shit’ bag. “We got what we could out of the truck,” Lucretia explained.

“We tried to turn it back over,” said Magnus, pointing to himself and Kilian.

“We didn’t have time to save your truck. Apparently every faction had someone in Glamor Springs and they were just flippin’ converging on you two. Anyway, you’ll each find a furnished pocket tent and some clean clothes in those bags.”

“Are you gonna kill us if we try to run?” asked Lup, folding her arms.

“No, but like, we’d rather you didn’t, please?” said Magnus.

Taako tossed his hands in the air. “You know what, fuck it. Taako here needs a bath.” He got up and grabbed their bags. He stopped halfway to the tent’s entrance and turned back to a flabbergasted Lup expectantly. She huffed and followed. They needed to stick together right now.

The twins exited the tent, finding themselves in a circle of tents of different colors. Lucretia only followed them to point out the pocket spa, which was the teal tent which smelled faintly of lavender from the outside. She handed off her stone of farspeech to them as they entered.

“She was freaking out during the resurrection.” Lucretia said. “I let her know you both made it, but she’s going to want to hear from you.”

The spa was already faintly lit by small lamps before Lup lit up the scented candles that sat around the room. They threw their stuff to the ground, peeled off their shredded, crunchy clothes, and lowered themselves into the hot tub in the center of the room. They could feel their nigh frozen muscles unclenching at the exposure to the hot water.

It was a little difficult to enjoy the experience of being in a hot tub when their were seven strangers waiting for them outside. They both kept looking at their pile of stuff a few feet away. The stone of farspeech and the photograph had been thrown on top of it.

“You know something, Lup?” said Taako, breaking the silence. “I stopped questioning why people were always trying to kill us a long time ago. I just kinda went, ‘This is our life now, who gives a shit?’”

Lup replied; “Yeah, uhh, I never put much thought into it either. Was kinda focused on the whole, Not Dying thing, you know?”

Taako reached over and grabbed the photograph, looking over the three elves again.

“We’d have to be related to some big hot shot if everyone’s trying that hard to kill us, or make us swear a blood oath to the Great Old Boy or whatever, right?”

“I don’t trust these guys.” Lup could guess where Taako’s train of thought was going, and she didn’t like it

“Hey, neither do I. We don’t even know if these people are who they say they are, or if the person on the other side of that stone is the actual queen, and/or our actual aunt.”

More silence followed. Then Taako reached over to their stuff again and came back with the stone of farspeech in hand. Both of them just kind of stared at it for a long time, neither one really committed to activating it and having to talk to whomever was on the other end.

“It can’t hurt to just talk to her, right?” Taako suggested. “Just so we know who we’re dealing with before we have to deal with them in person.” Lup nodded reluctantly, and just as reluctantly, Taako brushed his thumb over the polished quartz. It rang softly once, and almost immediately there was an exhausted, but keyed-up voice on the other end going, “Lucretia? What happened? How are the kids?”

“Hi, we are the kids,” said Taako.

There was stunned silence at the other end, then a “What?”

“It’s Lup and Taako, your alleged niece and nephew?” said Lup. “Also we’re a hundred and five, so like, not really kids anymore...”

The twins jumped as they heard the clatter of the other person’s stone being dropped onto the desk, and then the sound of a person taking deep breaths to keep herself from crying.

“Thank the gods, or, thank Pan, I guess?” she chuckled. “I was so worried.”

“Yeah, the whole almost dying thing was pretty wild,” Taako said, still pretty flippant. “Got to meet the grim reaper, which was interesting. He’s kind of a dork...”

“...Neat?” was all the response he got. She seemed genuinely rattled by their near death experience.

“Anyway, who are you?” Lup asked, trying not to sound too suspicious or excited or anything.

“Uhh, your aunt, Ceresel?” she seemed taken aback by the question. “You can call me auntie, of you want—Didn’t Lucretia tell you about me?”

“Yeah,” was all Lup said. There was a pause, as if Queen Ceresel was expecting more.

“I take it people have also tried the Lost Heir thing on you two, as well?” she asked.

“More than once,” Taako relented. Somehow, he couldn’t summon his usual amount of sass at this time. He blamed it on exhaustion.

Ceresel sighed and said; “I understand. Did Lucretia show you the picture of your mom and dad?”

“Well, there is a picture of our mother in our possession,” Taako said. “The dude could probably be our dad.”

“Right. Uhh, you probably wouldn’t recognize your dad. You two were babies when he died.” She was starting to sound choked up again.

“Which one was the sibling?” Lup asked.

“You’re father. Prince Dioner. Did your mother tell you about him?”

“Name’s the same,” said Taako, shrugging. “I just find it a _little_ weird that our dad would be the prince of a country and mom would just never mention that.”

“I had my own family back then,” said Ceresel. “The war’s been going on for a thousand years. There have been way too many attempts on our family to count. Dioner was killed at roughly the same time I declared my daughter my heir, we figured your mother would take you two into hiding and that would be the end of it.” She sighed. It was very easy for the twins to imagine her staring into the distance, at the ghost of loved ones she’s lost “It, obviously, was not the end of it. We didn’t want to risk keeping in contact after Rita ran. I didn’t even know you all had disappeared until years later.” The twins glanced at each other, crestfallen. It sounded like queen herself couldn’t even determine the fate of their mother. “Long story short, you two are my last living family, the only possible heirs to the throne of Faerun.”

“And you sent all of these people out to find us?” Lup asked.

“I sent Lucretia and Kilian, yes, but Lucretia kept me informed as she got that team together.” Ceresel said. “Kind of an—interesting crew she put together, but it seems to be working.”

The twins didn’t say anything. This felt like one of those Too Good to be True situations, but both of them were reluctant to just dismiss all evidence that this could be true and hit the road.

Taako cleared his throat. “Your Majesty—Auntie?—listen, me and Lup, we’re gonna talk about this, and well, uhh, get back to you, I guess...”

“Alright,” Ceresel said. “You two do that, get some rest and I’ll talk to you later. I love yo-” Taako shut the stone off. The twins kept staring at it as they mulled the situation over. Then he tossed the stone aside.

“So, pros and cons,” he said.

“Cons,” Lup said, “obvs, we don’t know these people, they outnumber us, and if the queen, the _fucking queen,_ decides we’re better off dead we have to deal with her thugs.”

“Fair. Until then, though, these people are supposed to be protecting us,” Taako offered. “I for one wouldn’t mind having an entourage of badasses on us for a little while, and honestly, Lulu,” he ignored her glaring at him over the hated nickname, “you need a break.”

“How am I supposed to take a break under these circumstances, _Koko?”_

“I’m not saying you’re wrong or that I’d trust these fools with my life. What I am saying is I can trust these people not to kill us for a little while. When things get bad we can always, run. Or rather rob ‘em blind and _then_ run.”

Lup sighed. “The last time someone tried to ‘help’ us, I got locked in a tower and they tried to brainwash you.”

“We were young and stupid at the time,” Taako said dismissively. “We know the red flags now, right?”

“Maybe,” Lup said. Honestly, she wouldn’t mind being able to go at least one night without having to keep watch, a day without having to look under every rock and bush and studying every inch of shade on the ground, without rounding on everything that moved out of the corner of her eye.

“Look Taako,” Lup began, “I’m willing to play along for a little while, if you insist. But the second they raise a red flag, we’re bouncing. Got it?”

“Cool beans.” He said. They gave each other a high five.

Neither of them admitted to the real reason why they had decided to go along with this. That they were both really hoping that Lucretia and Ceresel and everyone else were telling the truth, that they had a home and family to go back to, that this was the light at the end of the cave they’ve been lost in for years.

Neither of them said that out loud. It wasn’t worth saying if it wasn’t going to come true.


	5. Wariness and Waffles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: 8/7/28  
> Hey guys. I deleted the last two chapters because I hated them. Well I mostly hated chapter 7, 6 was ok.  
> The Br(i/y)ans will be back in... some point in the future

The twins had walked for a day, trying to pick out landmarks they might have passed as they ran the night before, but they couldn’t distinguish one cactus or rock from the next. It should have been as simple as waking back the way they came in a straight line but the threatening sound of a rattlesnake sent them off course again and again.

They did at least find a river. By that point the sun had left painful burns on their exposed skin, the rough ground had torn up their bare feet and they were nearly collapsing from the heat. They hadn’t been able to do anything for Lup’s hands, which had gone white, leathery, and numb. She nearly collapsed into the river when she bent down to get a drink. She had put her hands in the water. She couldn’t feel it. She passed out in the damp sand, the water barely lapping at her sunburned face.

“Lup, c’mon.” She heard Taako’s weak plea. He was shaking her and trying to pick her back up.

“Hey!” Someone across the river called to them. Taako grabbed onto Lup and pulled her in close. “It’s alright,” she called, and then there was splashing as she waded into the stream, “let me help you.” Lup had felt this person crouch over them, giving them some protection from the sun, and felt a massive hand lift her head and a canteen pressed to her lips. She drank from it gratefully. When she opened her eyes she saw a goliath woman looming over them.

“What happened? Are you two alone?” she asked. Neither answered, though it must’ve been obvious that they were alone. They flinched when the goliath gathered them up in her arms.

“We have a healer back at camp, they can take care of your hands.” At this point the twins were too tired and confused to object. Lup hardly remembered being carried back to across the river, the next thing Lup knew, her hands were searing, but the pain subsided in a second as what she’d come to recognize as primal energy healed her, leaving her exhausted and thirsty, but no longer in pain. The twins were in the relatively cool shade of a tent with a druid doing some healing magic on them. She saw the chard skin flake off, leaving her hands as they were before, but with patches where the skin is noticeably lighter.

The goliath entered. “I couldn’t find anyone.” She said to the druid as he wiped the dead skin powder off of his own hands. “They must have gotten separated from their caravan or something.”

“People tried to kill us!” Lup said as loudly as her dried throat and tired lungs would allow.

“It’s alright, kiddo, you’re safe now,” the goliath said, giving them both a pat on the head. Taako recoiled at her touch, leaning into Lup for comfort. “We’ll help you find your family. Just take it easy, we can head out when you’re feeling better, ‘kay?”

Lup laid back, too fatigued to do anything else. The twins fell asleep within minutes.

✧*:･ﾟ✧

Taako woke up to his stomach growling, but he was reluctant to actually get up. The fact that he had woken up in the cocoon of thick blankets he put himself in the night before on top of an absurdly soft bed didn’t help, but beyond that, if he got up he’d have to go outside and face the seven strangers that he decided to roll with.

He did poke his head out of his blankets to survey the tent, which had the same foresty theme as the bag it came in, and, on the inside, was large enough comfortably fit the full sized canopy bed he was laying in, a wardrobe, and a loveseat and chair in the corner. Lup had insisted on meditating in the loveseat the night before, but had fallen into actual sleep at some point in the night and was now sprawled across it, the tail of her big loose robe draped and pooled onto the floor, her hand dangling over her umbrestaff. The other bag, the one presumably containing an identical room with identical furniture, and probably an identical purse full of gold, was tossed onto the chair next to her, and the Oh Shit bag was tossed on top of it. Just seeing Lup was a bit if a relief. The last time he was by himself in a room this nice, he had been held captive in there, and was almost made to think that Lup had abandoned him.

He retreated back into his cocoon, even though it was starting to get uncomfortably warm in there. He forced himself not to think about Lady Heather, of all the times she said that their mother would be coming back on this specific day that never came, or how she’d say that maybe no one was coming back for him because of how ‘difficult’ he was when he’d confront her about her lies. He shoved her aside, and instead made himself go over a recipe he hadn’t gotten around to trying yet. _Sift flower and almond meal through a fine mesh sieve a little at a time,_ _throw out_ _the course remains, beat egg whites with cream of tartar and salt until frothy…_

Several minutes passed. His stomach growled, and he realized that they haven’t eaten since lunch the day before, which had been unusual for the past couple of months that they were actually able to afford to eat three times a day.

He crawled out of bed, though he was loath to do so, and crossed the tent to where Lup slept. She swatted at him resentfully before waking up entirely and forcing herself to sit up.

“What, whassa matter?” she said, shaking her head to wake herself up.

“I’m hungry and I’m not going out there alone.” He said. She nodded, a little famished herself, and pushed herself to her feet. Taako crossed to and opened the wardrobe and had to stop and gawk at the brand new, undamaged and not stolen wall of fabric in front of him. All jewel toned velvet and silk and elaborate beadwork and embroidery. Elven high fashion hasn’t changed much from movement-friendly garments based on large squares of fabric sewn or fastened together in the past thousands of years, with the exception of the incorporation of knit sweaters, but now that other species had embraced more formless, loose fitting or stretchy garments, elves had started to incorporate more non-elf elements into their clothing.

Taako threw on a straight cut tunic and some crushed velvet tights, and cinched it at the waist with a sequined sash. He found a pair of soft leather, thin soled boots and threw them on, just in case they needed to be on the move later that day, but also threw on an impractical amount of jewelry and a wizard hat that glittered with beads and metallic thread, because as long as he had access to shiny things he was gonna wear them out. Lup found a half-sleeved cotton dress and threw that on, as it appeared to be one of those days where she couldn't be bothered to put on more than one piece of clothing. She pulled on the boots she left by the door the night before as Taako dug into their Oh Shit bag for his box of spices and, to his pleasant surprise, his recipe card box.

They exited their tent cautiously, but it was still early, and the twins appeared to be the only people out and about. They went into the kitchen tent that was pointed out to them the night before. It, like the other tents, was bigger on the inside and a little less cramped then their food truck was. Nothing too extravagant, just a wood stove/oven, ice box, and enough counter and cabinet space to worth with. They both started scrounging around, seeing what they had to work with.

“Oh, shit yeah!” said Taako from inside a lower cabinet. He emerged holding a waffle iron aloft. He excitedly pulled milk and eggs from the icebox and immediately started digging around for flour. They only had the bare bones baking ingredients, so unfortunately, no chocolate chip raspberry waffles for Lup.

“You seem to be in top form,” she said, searching for the coffee tin they must’ve had as Taako sifted together the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

“Always,” he said. Lup could only reply with a loud yawn, but she recognized when her brother was trying to ignore their problems. Frankly, it irritated her how he’d just pretend like they weren't in danger all the time, leaving her on her own in the survival department. Honestly, he seemed very much on board with the idea that the queen of Faerun is their aunt. And to be fair, Lup didn’t see much of a reason to doubt them, other than that really big reason of all those other times someone very important to some faction, or at least someone pretending to be, tried to claim that he was their dad, or they knew their mother and once the queen was overthrown they could live a happy, comfortable life together. Under the smell of the wood stove, she could smell the dungeon she was locked in after the last time she believed that.

She wasn’t sure yet if the fact that Ceresel only knew two of these people could work in their favor or not.

“We should figure out a contingency plan,” she said, or moreso, demanded, as she dumped spoonfuls of coffee grounds into a coffee press.

“We have a contingency plan,” Taako said, already sounding annoyed, “rob ‘em blind and run.”

“I mean after we run,” she replied in a way that called Taako a dumbass without having to say it. “Like, if we’re gonna run away from the queen, where do we go to get away from her, on top of all our other buddies?”

“I dunno,” said Taako as he cracked and separated eggs. Talking about this nonsense was already making him nervous, and maybe causing him to break the eggs over the lip of the bowl harder than he needed to. “Goldcliff? With all the battle wagon gangs there, I don’t even think there’s cops there, so no one the queen can enlist to crack us down.”

“Yeah, no one except the actual criminals who probably wouldn’t mind the extra cash and possible royal pardon for turning us in. Good plan, bro bro.”

“Shit, you’re right. Uhh, Felicity Wilds maybe? I hear about people just kinda disappearing around there, like, could just be some weird monster we would just have to avoid...”

“I’ve tried to steer us away from there because of the people just disappearing bit, but whatever...” She could tell he was just naming places off the top of his head and not really trying. The rest of the conversation was Lup throwing out suggestions and writing ideas down on a blank card from the recipe box while Taako halfheartedly gave his two cents here and there. He had become more interested in beating the absolute crap out of the egg whites. It was a good place to put his anxious energy, because Lup could never just chill when they had a second to relax and always had to bring up the danger he _knew_ they were _always_ in. He was trying to enjoy the reprieve they had because there was no telling how long it was gonna last, and it would probably be good for their mental health if Lup could’ve gone, at the very least, a day without reminding him of the plethora of trained killers and complete weirdos that lurked behind their backs, one of whom was gonna get lucky one of these days because the twins were gonna get too tired to fight back, or one of them makes the wrong choice and there’s gonna be no one left to resurrect them.

“Taako, are you listening?” Lup asked. Taako’s initial answer was the sound of a metal bowl being slammed onto the counter. He then leaned over the counter and put his face in his hands.

“No,” he admitted from behind his hands. “I wasn’t listening.” His fingers dug into his hair, most of which cascaded over his shoulders, and he realized that, like a fool, he didn’t tie his hair back before working with foodstuffs. He looked at her, still leaning into the counter. “Look Lup, I know this is gonna get bad, and you’re probably right to start planning for the worst now, but,” he was already lightheaded and had chills from this conversation alone. “Is it possible, that,” he picked his words carefully, really not wanting to turn this into a fucking argument, “That by acting like these people are gonna inevitably turn on us, that’ll only make them do it faster _but,_ ” he stopped her before she could retort, “we could also leverage our combined wit and charm and get at least one of these ragtag bunch of misfits to like us more than the reward the queen has dangling over their head?”

“You kinda tried that before,” Lup said softly.

“Not exactly, tried, I just stalled on that one guy because you were sick as shit and we needed a place to crash. It actually worked for a little while. And that guy was absolute garbage, these people actually seem ok. I think we can ply the charm and at least let us live for a little while and then feel really bad about sending us to certain doom, at the _very_ least.”

Lup just ran a hand down her face. Before she could bash him for his dumb idea, Magnus burst into the tent and stopped short when he saw them, clearly expecting to see someone else.

“Oh, hey,” he said, Doing a quick but deep bow Lup was sure gave him whiplash on the way up, and _Fuck_ _,_ maybe it was past con men overdoing it with the deference that did it for her but she could feel her eye twitch the second Magnus did that. He spoke uncomfortably, which, considering how they met, was understandable. Every normal person should be uncomfortable in this situation, Lup thought, but none moreso than her and Taako. “Didn’t think you guys were up. H-how’d you sleep?”

“Just fine, darling, no complaints,” said Taako, already getting started with the charm offensive. Lup kept herself from rolling her eyes at him. They were going to notice the difference between ‘friendly’ Taako and Lup and the rightfully suspicious elves they met the night before, and to his credit, Magnus did seem taken aback by Taako being amicable.

“I actually meditated,” she said, not really as amicably as Taako, but not outright hostile at this point. She was going to at least try to play it realistically during this stupid ruse.

“Me and Lup were actually about to have breakfast. Tell me Mags, you like waffles?” Lup felt her shoulders tense up. Taako was gonna start by using his cooking skills to gain the group’s favor, not unlike when they were desperately jumping from caravan to inn to adventuring party for most of their lives.

“Who doesn’t?” he said, grinning.

“Excellent,” said Taako, clapping his hands. He grabbed his wand and went to cast enlarge on the batter before deciding it would be easier if he folded in the egg whites first.

Ultimately, the whole team partook in the twins’ waffle breakfast. Thankfully, no one made a comment about royalty cooking for and serving people who were ‘below’ them, though that could be because they guessed, correctly, that people have tried to poison them before. Taako carried the conversation between the two of them, starting with an apology to the team for his ‘paranoia’ the night before.

“You’re good,” Merle said, “we get it, it’s a tough world out there, there’s good people, and there are people who deserve to get incinerated on the spot, most of us have met the latter.” There was some agreement and consternation from the group. Lup noticed a flash on a few faces, Barry and Magnus in particular, that indicated they’ve met a few people who needed to be incinerated a little.

Lup didn’t feel 100% relaxed by the end of it, but she did realize Taako ought to take the lead when dealing with these guys. She’d probably have to come up with the contingency plans on her own, but at least with Taako acting as a charming distraction she could hang back and keep an eye out for anything that could be an issue for them.


	6. Just a Truly Disconcerting Amount of Spiders

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone. Here's ch. 6 version 2.0. Sorry about waffling on y'all. Again, I'm pushing the original chapter 7 farther down the line because I need to space out my fight scenes a little. When I revisit that scene, I'll be better and make more sense probably.  
> This chapter in itself hasn't changed much from the original.

“How’s everything going over there?” the queen asked. Lucretia heard the clink of a glass against a table as she spoke.

“Fine, I guess,” Lucretia said, her fingers drumming on her meticulous notes. She was back in her own tent, one dressed in white, silver and blues cut by mahogany bookshelves and a rainbow of books, a chunk of them beat up leather bound journals. “Taako has been very amicable this whole day, even made breakfast for all of us. I was kind of weird really, it felt like he was masking to me. Lup’s still a little wary on us, which makes sense, given the circumstances.”

“She still doesn’t trust you us?”

“It hasn’t been a day yet, madam. I mean in addition to her and Taako nearly dying last night I think she’s still trying to work out whether we’re telling the truth.”

Ceresel groaned. “What’s it gonna take? I don’t think I have another photo of me and their parents.”

“It’s probably just gonna take time. You’ve gotta let the dough rise before you can bake it, right?”

“Right,” Ceresel sighed. “You asked them if they wanted to talk to me, right?”

“Yes. They turned it down, but I gave them your number. Taako took it, said they’ll call you at some point and shoved it in the back of his recipe box.”

After a pause Ceresel asked, “Do you know their number?”

“I don’t, and I don’t think blowing up their stones is going to appeal to them any.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I wouldn’t know what to talk about except for our many shared enemies anyway. Shit, I don’t even know what they like. Lucretia, what are they into?”

“Well you could ask them whenever they’re ready to talk to you,” said Lucretia. There was a puff of air at the other end which Lucretia interpreted as a growl. “I know Taako likes to cook, anyway. And he’s good at it too. Those waffles this morning were fuckin’ baller.”

“Really?” Ceresel seemed to perk up at that.

“Mm-Hm.”

Ceresel snickered delightedly. “And Lup?”

“...Fire? Again, she’s not much for conversation right now.”

“Right.” She sighed again. “Keep me posted, will you, Lucretia?”

“Of course, Your Majesty.” The line disconnected.

✧*:･ﾟ✧

They’re on the move later that day.

The twins had kept the second bag given to them by the queen unopened in their tent, which was now folded into a package about the size of their hand and stuffed into their Oh Shit bag. Everyone elses’ tent was likewise folded up and thrown into their backpacks. They walked in formation as directed by the muscle of the group. Killian took point and walked several paces ahead, a crossbow that looked like it was meant to take out dragons, monsters and armored vehicles of similar size mounted on her shoulder, and a bundle of javelins/bolts were strapped on her back. Carey was somewhere in the trees, decked out in knives. Magnus, armed with an ax and shield, was directly in front of the disproportionately large group of spellcasters (Magnus was worrying earlier about ‘team composition’) and the boy detective, all of whom had their own weapons out, two wands, and umbrella, a staff, a beat-up ‘X-treme Teen Bible’, and a hand crossbow.

“Something up?” Barry asked when he saw the twins staring, or in Taako’s case, glaring.

“Well,” said Taako, switching back to ‘friendly’ mode, but only just, “your—I don’t know if you noticed, but, your denim, doesn’t match.”

“This is an old jacket?” Barry replied, adjusting his jean jacket self-consiously. The thing didn’t even have patches on it or anything.

“Would you be any happier if the did match?” Lup remarked to Taako. Barry turned his attention back in front of him, mostly just grateful Taako wasn’t asking questions about his bone wand. “If you ask me, it’s almost a Look.”

“You would,” said Taako to her, rolling his eyes. He knew what her type was, and it was roughly the unkempt nerd in front of them.

“Sor-ry,” she whispered, pulling Taako away from the group slightly, “I didn’t realize making fun of people’s fashion choices was part of your whole charisma check. But hey,” she gave him a slap on the back, maybe a little harder than was necessary, enough to rattle all the jewelry he was still wearing, “who would know better than you?”

“You guys might want to keep it down,” said Lucretia, coming off with the same effect of a strict teacher commanding her unruly students to sit the fuck down. She gave Taako in particular a piercing look for his loud (both figuratively and literally) fashion choices. “Prying eyes and all that.”

“Right, sorry,” said Taako. The air between the trees around them was starting to shimmer with silken fibers. Taako got in real close to Lucretia. “So, anyway...”

“Yes, Taako?” She didn’t seem entirely put off by him getting so close.

“Auntie told us you were the one in charge of this whole operation, that you kinda got this whole team together.”

“I did,” she said. She seemed proud of her motley crew.

“How did you become chancellor to the queen anyway? Like, How old are you?”

“My grandmother was her chancellor before me.” She didn’t seem entirely happy with that. She didn’t say her age, but she probably wasn’t that much older than Magnus.

“So like, nepotism?” said Taako.

“You might say that,” said Lucretia, annoyed. “As you can imagine there aren't a lot of people Her Majesty can trust anymore.”

Lup shot a look at Taako. “What about the rest of this rolling crew?” she asked, butting in before Taako could make this weirder. “Where did you find them?”

“Here and there. Magnus actually introduced me to Ms. Fangbattle. Kept saying ‘You’ve gotta bring her on! She taught me how to do sweet flips and stuff’.”

“Where’d you meet Magnus?”

“His hometown, Raven’s Roost.”

“Oh...” Neither twin had any further questions on that. That asshat Kalen ran Raven’s Roost. Not only had they run into people who worked for him, but they’ve also met a couple of normal people who escaped from Raven’s Roost with some stories to tell of that guy’s regime. “Alright, real question, why’d you bring the twelve year old?”

“Ten.”

“Ten it is. Where did you find him? What’s he doing carrying out a secret mission for the queen?” Lup was probably interrogating her harder than Taako had been, but Taako was trying to be the Nice one here, not her.

“Believe it or not, that ten year old is the world’s greatest detective. He had had been catching murderers and locating missing people for the city of Rockport when I hired him.”

“Yeah I don’t believe that. He’s twel—ten. Shouldn’t he be in school, playing kickball, or Sid Meier’s Civilization the Board Game or whatever kids are doing nowadays?” Admittedly, it was weird for Lup to ask this, since she and Taako never really were kids themselves. Doing kid stuff was a little difficult when you’ve been on the run since you were seven calendar years old.

“He’s fine with it.” Lucretia said, shrugging. Lup had just then noticed that the thin shimmering lines between the trees grew into thick spider webs with blocked the sun as well as clouds. She heard Magnus take a deep breath next to her.

“Hey Ango!” Taako said loudly, because apparently being loud and obnoxious was part of his con. “Why are you a detective?”

Everyone shushed him, and he got a harsh “Prying eyes!” from at least two people.

Magnus put an arm out in front of Lucretia, bringing the group to a stop. The daylight had gotten unnaturally dim from all the webbing overhead. They saw the shadows moving at the very edge of where their light source could reach. He, Merle and Lucretia formed a protective circle around the twins and the child. Killian crept back closer to the rest of the group, loading up her surprisingly quiet miniature ballista. There was a weird scratching noise above them. Lup started channeling, getting ready to throw some fire down wherever they needed it, but the Queen’s Seven closing in on her made her feel a bit claustrophobic. She hadn’t even decided if she liked these people yet. Taako stood back to back with Lup, wand pointed in front of him. They heard that scratching, clicking sound again from somewhere off to the side. Something moved in the shrubbery, and then some _things_ moved.

Lup saw a spindly leg, kind of fuzzy, had too many joints and arced in a weird way, uncurl from out of the brush. A second and third leg followed. She raised her staff at them, pushing through the humanoid wall that had encased her so that no one but the creature got fried. The second she saw the hooked mandibles and the many black eyes she launched a fireball at it, and the spider went up in a whoosh of flame and a pitiful squeak, and for a second the fire was reflected in dozens of black beady eyes on a truly disconcerting amount of spiders of unusual size staring them down from all sides.

The spiders launched themselves at the team. Taako threw a spell at the ground, turning the brush into a sheet of ice at the spiders’ feet. They slipped and struggled for purchase on the suddenly slick ground, but plenty more flew at them, scattering the party throughout the clearing and landing a few venomous bites. A big one flew at the twins but Magnus knocked it back into the shadows with his shield before slicing into the wave of them, muttering “Shit. Shit. _Shit_...” the whole time.

Lup knocked another wave away with a concussive blast. As the light from her attack receded the shadows themselves seemed to move and ensnare the otherwise unhurt spiders. Barry, who had ducked against a tree, let out a puff of air. It looked like he was shivering. She could hear Merle flipping furiously through the pages of his X-treme Teen Bible nearby and casting shielding and healing spells wildly as his companions were assailed by spiders.

A bolt from Killian’s crossbow tore through the mass of spiders and their web ans embedded itself in a tree out of sight. Carey could intermittently be seen flipping through the air from brabch to branch. Dead spiders fell from the ceiling as she did, most of them catching in their own webs. She fell to the ground landing hard on her feet, tearing at the sheet of webbing that clung to her.

Lup found the biggest mass of web and lit it up, keeping a hold on the fire firmly weaving the eager flame between the trunks of the trees like she was trying to keep a hold on a spooked horse. The solidified shadows wavered but held themselves and the spiders they had a hold of in place as her spell spread and lit up the clearing, but a few spiders managed to wriggle free and avoid getting burned as they went back to attacking the intruders. Magnus ran at them and chopped them asunder, swearing and probably crying the whole time, it was hard to tell. Taako buckled under the weight of a big one and shielded his face as he turned his own skin to stone. A small crossbow bolt stuck it in the eye right before it was thrown from him by a blast of force.

A wet crunch came from all around, and the shadows dispersed and relieved some squashed spiders. The ones that were still moving were consumed by Lup’s fire or stabbed by Carey or chopped up by Magnus. Soon enough the woods were quiet again, and it was just the nine adventurers alone in a clearing with many burned, pierced, slashed and crushed spider husks.

“Dangit,” muttered Lucretia, rubbing her eyes. “We literally took the most circuitous route out of town to avoid this sort if thing.”

“We couldn’t account for everyone in Glamor Springs,” Barry replied as he flexed his fingers and blew into his hands. He seemed to be colder than the air in the cave would allow. “Someone must’ve followed unseen.”

“Magic Fucking Brian,” said Lucretia, shaking his head. She waved at the still smoldering exoskeletons; “He would do this.”

Lup thought back to yesterday, trying to determine which one of the creepers might me the kind of person to set up a bunch of spiders hoping this happless bunch would stumble into it. That halfling necromancer, maybe, but honestly, that one felt too subtle to Lup for this sort of thing. Her mind fell on the drow, and she held his image in her mind for a bit and, was he wearing a spider shirt?

“Drow man?” she asked the group in general.

“Yes, he was there yesterday,” Killian answered. Lup rubbed her temples. He didn’t even buy anything. Magnus rushed passed him, brandishing his ax and combing their surroundings for Magic Brian. They heard wood cracking above, and he jumped out of the way right before a flaming branch fell were he stood. The wizards of the group all moved to snuff the branch out.

“Ok, if he was anywhere nearby he probably ran from the possible forest fire,” suggested Merle.

“Yeah, probably,” said Lup, sheepishly snuffing out any loose flames still about. “So should we.”

When the group was assured nothing else was burning they quickly made their egress. No one saw the eyes watching them from afar, fingers tapping nervously on the back of his giant spider mount as he watched the carnage below as he came to the conclusion he could not take them right now, and that maybe trying to trap an evocation wizard in such a flammable place was shortsighted of him. He and his massive spider silently climbed away through the trees.


	7. Storytime with Magnus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys. If you're wondering where Davenport is, he's in this, but he's in the military and is too busy for an escort mission. I'm starting to get dizzy juggling all of these characters right now anyway o_o;

After a suspiciously uneventful day and a half the group reached a town. It was fairly dense but small in area, not expanding farther out than the highway it was attached to. They had set up camp farther away from the tent/camper city on the side of the road. Pocket tents were expensive equipment and popping out all of theirs next to people living out of regular ass tents and wagons and such would probably be too conspicuous.

As is usually the case when things got too quiet, Lup was pacing around the campsite searching the area with magic eyes, even though Killian and Merle were already on patrol, and Lucretia had thrown up wards around their campsite. Lup’s eyes caught the fine sheen of Lucretia’s spell and was annoyed by it, finding it too distracting to fully ascertain any threats in the area. Taako had gone into the kitchen, saying he needed to take inventory after days of cooking for these fools.

Lup rounded on footsteps coming up from behind, but it was just Magnus, still a few yards away from her. When he went into a bow she quickly stopped him.

“Stop, just-” she said “-don’t do that.”

“Sorry?” said Magnus.

“It’s-” Lup groaned. “I don’t like—deference, it’s weird. Just say ‘hi’ to me, that would be enough.”

“O-ok. Uhh, hail and well met?” he said, correcting himself awkwardly. Lup snorted. _Baby steps._

“How’re we looking?” she asked.

“Fine? If anything we don’t wants gets through the barrier we’re gonna know about it.”

Taako exited the kitchen tent jotting something down on a notepad. When he and Magnus saw each other, the latter stopped himself from bowing and asked Taako how he felt about deference.

“I’m fine with it?” said Taako, confused. Lup scoffed at him.

“C’mon dude, it’s tacky.”

“ _You_ c’mon,” Taako said, moving into Lup, “We have _status_ now.” Lup rubbed her eyes. He seemed to genuinely be into this whole thing and she was beginning to question how much of what he said was for show. He went into their tent and emerged with his backpack. “Yo, we need groceries, am I allowed to go down there or is Lucretia possibly gonna yell at me?”

“Wait, wait a sec, bro,” said Lup. “You wanna go down there,” she pointed to the town across the city of carts and tents below them, “by yourself, for groceries?”

“Well we ran out of all of this,” said Taako, motioning at the list. It was mostly populated by herbs.

“Do we really need all this, though?” Lup said, cringing, about all the herbs, and Taako looked at her like she had just committed blasphemy.

“Seriously? We-we’re eating out of cans-”

“We’ve always eaten out of cans, when we got lucky.”

“You know as well as I do we need herbs to make that stuff edible.”

“Uhh, guys?” Magnus interjected, “I can go get all that, it’s no big deal.”

“Nah, I need to know we’re getting something decent.”

“I can take you down there then.”

“Cool.” Taako folded up his shopping list and stiffed into the pocket of his long, iridescent jacket.

“Hold on,” Lup sighed before running into their tent and coming back with her umbrestaff tucked under her arm and stuffing a bag of gold into the pocket of her britches. The umbrestaff was a pretty inconspicuous weapon if you had your magic eyes shut.

They went through the sea of camped out travelers to the open air market, which was filled with out of towners, and the three of them blended in fairly well except for Lup, who was tossing suspicious looks at anyone within eyeshot.

“So, you guys doing ok?” asked Magnus, giving them both, Lup in particular, a concerned look.

“Sure, why wouldn’t we be?” Taako replied dismissively.

“I would think the two murder attempts two days in a row would be stressful.”

“Eh.” Taako shrugged and went back to looking over some vegetables.

“We’re almost died before,” Lup added just as dismissively.

“Yeah, you know how it is,” said Taako, “Raven’s Roost, right?” Lup gave him a look that said _Excuse you why are you bringing_ that _up now? What is your plan?_

To her surprise, Magnus let out a puff of air and said, “Jeez, you can’t imagine. I bet from the outside life in Raven’s Roost seems so simple, but nothing is as it see-”

“Yeah, we heard about the martial law and stealing from the townspeople, and whatnot,” said Taako, not really up to hearing a monologue about humanoid suffering in Raven’s Roost. “We ran into some friends of Kalen’s, some other refugees, some friends of Kalen pretending to be refugees, you know.”

“’Other’ refugees?”

“Yeah? Like you?”

“Oh, I didn’t run. I’m not gonna run, that’s where my home and family is.” Magnus pulled a wallet out of his pocket and the twins cooed at a photo of Magnus with a sturdy looking lady with big, sparkling eyes and a mass of curly hair, and an older man with roughly the same skin tone and hair that was visibly graying in some parts. He introduced them as Julia and Stephen Waxman.

“You guys look so happy,” said Lup.

“Yeah,” said Magnus dreamily.

“She your wife?”

“Not yet.” He glanced around to see if anyone might’ve been eavesdropping and leaned in close. The twins did the same. “We’ve kinda put off the marriage until after, uhh,” he lowered his voice some more “we get rid of Kalen.”

“Like, the three of you offing him?” Taako whispered.

“No not just us three. There’s an active rebellion in Raven’s Roost.”

“Ok, but, why are you here then?” asked Lup.

“We kinda need the queen’s help. The Queen’s not exactly happy about the succession attempt, obviously, and when Lucretia came to me saying they needed my help we made a deal. If I can keep you guys safe all the way home she can send people and equipment and everything to us.”

“She can’t just-” Lup made a neck slice motion.

“I guess not? Kalen locked the territory down it’s probably gonna take both her and my people combined to throw him out.”

“Well what’s she waiting for?”

Magnus just sighed and shrugged. “What else do we need?”

They made their way back to camp with several bags of groceries between them. Halfway back they heard shouting, which stood out from the noise of the camp due to how hostile it was. Before the three could process what the argument was about there was a loud bang and a shower of sparks. The spectators cleared out and they saw a woman with sparks of electricity arching between her fingers. She was aiming at a guy ten feet across from her wearing a mechanical arm and swarmed by small, buzzing machines.

“Aww, fighting electricity with robits, this is gonna hurt,” said Taako. He waved his wand and made a chair grow from the ground for him to sit in and watch the oncoming mess.

“Hey, woah, wait a sec,” said Magnus, stepping between the two. “What’s the situation here guys?”

“This doesn’t concern you, muggle,” said the sorcerer.

“I’d hate to agree with her but you _should_ get out of the way,” said her opponent, “these MOM assholes don’t discriminate.”

Taako, Lup, and Magnus all cringed. They’d just walked in on a fight between a member of The Might of Mages and a guy who was probably from The Wave of Tomorrow.

“Guys, can we maybe not?” said Magnus. “There’s no reason for this. We-”

“ _They’re_ trying to subjegate us ‘muggles’ and instill a Thaumocracy, and you’re trying to tell me there’s no reason for us to fight.”

“I mean,” said Magnus, “you really wanna do this here? You guys are gonna hurt somebody.” he waved at the lanes and lanes of tents.

“Apparently, that’s what he wants,” said the sorcerer. “He’s not gonna-” she stopped and looked over at Lup, and her eyes went to her umbrella. “What is that? How many schools of magic can-” She looked between the umbrella and Lup and asked in an interrogating tone “You make that?”

“What if I didn’t?” Lup retorted, folding her arms and squaring up against the sorcerer. Taako got to his feet, not at all happy about getting involved in the fight.

“Why is someone like you running around with this meathead?” the sorcerer demanded.

“It’s complicated,” Lup said dismissively. She raised her umbrestaff. “You wanna see how I crammed so much magic in this thing, or do you wanna actually walk away from this spat?” She glanced at the artificer. “Same goes for you, nerd.”

The two looked between Lup, each other, Magnus, and the umbrella. The artificer shot daggers at the two known magic users in the area. The sorcerer looked at her in an almost pitying way. The two did back off, and once they were out of sight Lup grabbed the boys and sped back towards camp.

“There’s gotta be more of their buddies around here, right?” she said to Magnus.

“More than likely,” he said. He pulled a stone of farspeech out of his pocket and relayed what just happened. On the other end, Lucretia relayed the message to everyone else.

“MOM sorcerer?” Barry chimed in, “just the one?”

“That’s the only one they saw,” said Lucretia, “but we have to assume they travel in packs, right?” Barry nodded nervously. He cast his magic eyes toward the camp and saw a technicolor light show of magic auras radiating from many people and magic items that were scattered throughout the camp. As he watched them, a small but not ignorable number of these auras were gathering at the far edge of the camp.

“Lucretia, looks like a few magic users are getting together. Could be the sorcerers’ buddies.”

“Alrighty, we’re already packing up. The second Magnus gets back with the twins we’re out of here.”

Barry didn’t waste any time. He didn’t even bother to retrieve his backpack before he folded his tent up and clipped it to his belt loop.


	8. Whoops this is a UST scene now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, sorry for the wait guys. I guess I got tired/busy? and I stopped writing things? Well not really I wrote the backstorys for my DND characters but then I stopped and, like, I was having a hard time getting the creative inertia going again yada yada yada I'm just having a hard time getting my shit together right now. If you're reading this thanks for your patience.  
> Apparently now is the time to actually get the ball rolling on the shipping... Shrug emoticon

The team moved as fast as they could through the overgrown thicket. All of them were winded by the time they reached a stream. Lucretia ordered everyone to take five, and each one of them flopped down next to the water, taking a long drink and refilling their canteens. Lup stayed vigilant the whole time, as her and Taako were a little too familiar with the MOM at this point, they’d blow smoke up their asses about getting the factions protection from their many shared enemies. The cool thing about them was that they did give her and Taako shelter for a bit, no strings attached, too bad they were all mage supremacists. That sorcerer had gotten too interested in Lup and her umbrella.

Most of the team was sitting around catching their breath. Taako was lounging against a tree staring into the middle distance. The only other person who was still alert was Barry, who was hovering at the edge of the clearing scrutinizing the trees from where they just came.

“See anything, Jarry?” she called as she walked up next to him, startling him a little. She glared in the same direction he did.

“Jarry?”

“’Barry’ plus jeans,” she said sheepishly, already not liking her own joke.

“That’s, too close to an actual name for the joke to work.” He smiled a bit though.

“Yeah. You see any of our friends?”

He kept scrutinizing the thicket. “Not, no one nearby. We’ve probably outrun them physically by now, hopefully they don't have an arcane eye or whatever trained on us.”

“Do you think either of them had friends?”

“Yeah, probably.” He looked unsteady, and he pressed himself into the trunk of the tree. “Saw a group of mages clustering together after you called us.”

“How many?” Lup’s alarm went off.

“Twenty?”

Lup hissed “shit” as she pushed through the dried cluster of sticks back out into the woods. She heared yelling and the brush crunching behind her but she ignored it and outran the voices of her compatriots quickly, zipping between the trees as easily as she’d run across open ground, scanning the woods around her with all senses and keeping her umbrella at the ready. She found her way to the top of a cliff that overlooked they dry but dense woods.

 _If anyone was following_ _us_ _I_ _could just light the trees the fuck up and be done with all of them,_ she pondered while subconsciously twirling a small flame on her fingers. She imagined herself just throwing a ball of fire into the trees below, lighting the whole thing up below her, and eventually the chaos would clear out into a pile of ash and little else. Everything in the trees would die, including herself and Taako...

She clenched her fist, snuffing out the tiny fidget flame, taken aback by the image in her own head. She took a couple steps back while taking deep breaths, just now feeling her heart racing.

The bushes behind her rustled and she spun around and lobbed a fireball at it, and she saw Barry leap out of the way yelling “Oh shit!” right as the bush went up in flames.

“Aww damn, sorry,” she said, running over and snuffing the flaming bush into the ground. She changed her tune quickly “Did all of you come out to get me or is someone still with Taako?”

“It’s just me,” Barry panted, pushing himself off the ground. “I got magic eyes.”

“Yeah, right. I was just making sure none of the friends were following us.”

“Didn’t have to run away from us. Not a great idea to split the party.”

“Right. It’d be bad for your resume if I, the _lost princes_ _s_ of _Faerun_ , died, huh?”

“Yeah, probably,” he said, gesturing tiredly. He walked toward the edge of the cliff himself, scrutinizing the woods below. He was looking unusually frantic, and Lup got the feeling that it had nothing to do with her.

“See anything?” she asked.

“No…?” he said, looking behind them and scrutinizing the trees at their back. “Lup, does something feel, off?”

She poked her head through the trees, and aside from realizing she forgot to keep track of where she was going and got herself completely lost, something did feel wrong. _Right_ , thought Lup _. Ther_ _e’_ _s always something lurking behind our backs._

They started back through the woods. Lup tried not to make it super obvious that she had gotten herself lost and she was letting Barry take the lead, and if Barry did notice he didn’t comment on it. Both wizards picked up on a wild energy radiating from the trees. They slowed down, trying to pinpoint where it was coming from and what exactly the spell was.

A loud groaning of a tree rattled their ears and in the next second they were snatched up in the branches and lifted off of the ground, getting slammed around in a cage only big enough for one person.

Lup was still for a second to let the ringing in her head die down and her body process that it had just been forcibly bounced between a human and some very rigid sticks. Whatever she had landed on moved, and it took her a second to realize she had landed on Barry. She tried to pull herself off of the stocky human, but having little elsewhere to go she ended up squished between his side and the thin branches, which have woven themselves into the bars of a cage. Lup, undeterred by this trap, layed a burning hand on the branch, but the fire didn’t catch, so she grabbed the branches with her other burning hand. The fire didn’t catch at all, and Lup generally had the opposite problem where her fire spells would eat everything if she couldn't wrangle it. She blasted the spot as much as she could without setting herself and Barry on fire, forcing a white hot ball of heat on the one branch, but when the spell dispersed the branch remained untouched.

“Well, fuck,” Barry commented, looking at the sticks that remained unscorched by Lup’s fire. He shifted to try to get her elbow out of his ribs.

“Yup...” She shifted to try to make them both less squished in and ending up landing even more into his squishy side as he attempted to draw his wand out of it’s holster. “Sorry,” she muttered as they both scrambled to get his arm out from under her. Once his arm was free he tried to unravel the spell.

As he did that, both he and Lup heard a quiet, unnatural buzzing. The more they listened, the more metallic it sounded. They searched the thicket for the source, and they realized the buzzing was coming from a few sources. Something very small and made of steel glinted as it zipped between the trees. They zipped through the branches, scanning every nook. As one of them got closer to Lup saw the glint of a camera lens on it. It suddenly turned mid flight, hovered for a bit before heading at them, as if it caught sight of them out of it’s peripheral vision. It flew right up to Lup’s face and hovered an inch away. She jabbed at it with a lightning laced finger and the thing sparked violently and spun out of the air, and when two more came at them she gave them the same electric greeting.

“So the good news is,” said Lup, “maybe the science boys can get us out.”

“Oh wonderful,” groaned Barry. “I was hoping we’d shaken at least one of these friends off.” They both maneuvered as Barry put his wand back in it’s holster. He grabbed the branches himself, seeming to study the energy in the branches. He muttered; “fireproof” and then “Keep watch for me, Lup?” before taking a deep breath and going quiet.

Lup felt the energy in the wood around them change, like the tree was seizing up and digging further into the ground to keep from getting uprooted. Then she felt the energy getting very slowly pulled out of it. Barry was straining like he was lifting a heavy weight. She watched him very slowly drain the energy out of the tree, and the branches get dry and brittle as a result.

Lup picked up on the crunch of brush from somewhere below them. She twisted around their tiny trap trying to find the source of the footsteps but saw no one. She listened harder to determine the direction of the footsteps.

“Barry, do your friends usually creep through the woods and not say anything when they’re looking for someone?” she whispered.

“No?” He was more concerned with the branch cage than anything going on outside of it, only letting out an exerted breath of air to punctuate his reply. Lup felt him shudder. The branches were loosing their color a little bit faster. The heavy footfalls were getting closer. Lup tried instinctively to retreat farther back into their cage and searched the forest floor again. This person was closer now, their footsteps were wandering through the area. The whole area must have been enchanted with this exact trap, and their visitor searching the area. Lup hoped that the other traps wouldn’t go off with the mage that set them in the area. She looked back at Barry’s work. There was a circle no bigger than two feet of dead branches in front of them now.

“Alright, stop,” she whispered, pulling his cold hand away. She tried to get her long legs out from under her in the tiny space and kicked the branches as hard as she could. The branch cracked audibly under her foot but held on. The footsteps stopped, and immediately changed direction toward them, and they both picked up the footsteps of two other people. Barry attempted a kick, smashing through the webbing of sticks, but getting his boot caught in the process. The two of them were able to bust the cage open enough for them to wriggle out of and hop down into the brush right as the three trappers were running up on them. Lup grabbed Barry by the arm and threw them both into the closest shrub as a firbog broke through the thicket and saw their destroyed trap. Two humans followed them on, weapons drawn, expecting a fight and finding no one. These three must have been more Greenwardens. They were basically anywhere where there was plants.

Barry and Lup watched the three look around from inside the bush. Barry tried to keep quiet as he caught his breath. The trappers scanned the ground, finding a trail of disturbed brushed that connected the burnt patch of ground with the bush they were hiding in. As they turned to follow the tracks a sphere of darkness burst through the area, washed over their hiding place and completely blacked out Lup’s vision. She instinctively blinked to try to clear it, dispite knowing that her dark vision was useless in magically occurring darkness. Barry was still pressed to her side. They could still hear the other group, whom was now calling to each other to get their bearings in the dark cloud. The two held their breath as someone passed right in front of them, trying to stay on the track despite seeing nothing.

Lup found Barry’s hand and pulled him up with her. “C’mon,” she barely whispered, cringing at how loud her own voice sounded in this situation. They picked themselves out of the bush and fumbled their way through the dark. They couldn’t keep their own footsteps quiet, and they heard one of the trappers go “There they are!” and run at them. The two ducked against a tree and the person flew past them and skidded to a halt, trying to detect them again.

They had all spread out and managed to surround Barry and Lup in their search for them. Lup nearly lept out of her skin as Barry pressed against her, as if shielding her from the potential attackers. Despite being trapped between a man and a tree she managed to stay still and quiet. The wardens seemed to have all stopped in their tracks. Lup imagined them coiled up ready to pounce at the next snap of a twig underfoot. Her hand shook a she raised it in front of her. The darkness was unrelenting and she felt like it was even leaking through her eyes and into her brain. A little light was all she needed, but their enemies were probably waiting for any amount of light to appear as well. As far as she knew they could all be on top of them right now, unwittingly, waiting.

Barry backed off, but laid a hand on her shoulder. Not firmly, but heavy enough for Lup to know he wasn’t going anywhere. It was then she noticed how hard her heart was hammering. It wouldn’t surprise her if he felt it.

Her mind was able to slow down once she could move. They both shifted silently so Lup could have a bit more space. She turned and raised her staff, keeping it close to her hip, and tried to “see” a point on the other side of the dark cloud they were in, and she let the smallest light, almost too small for her to see, manifest over there.

Their hunters seemed to see it, as one of them repeated “Over there!” and all three of them headed toward it. Barry and Lup stood up silently, and then made a mad scramble in the other direction, weaving between the trees until they broke into daylight once again. They heard their enemies change their course behind them, though their own chase was impeded by a combination of darkness and dense prickly terrain

They ran, Barry correcting their course before Lup sent them in a completely different direction then the camp.

 


	9. The second trap that day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was worried this fic would die bc I couldn’t write a man seducing a tree.   
> Sorry for taking so long between updates again. We should be back on track (whatever that means at this point), for a few chapters as I resolve this thing. Thank you for hanging in there :)  
> S/O to some people in the DNDiscord for being my accomplices in the tree fucking. You know who you are.

Taako watched Lup run right off into the woods without a word and put his face in his hands. He couldn’t tell what was going through her head at this point. One second she’s like “We have to stick together” and the next she was running the fuck off to parts unknown looking for a fight. Barry went after her immediately.

“...Anyone else gonna…?” Taako announced to the rest of the party, waving in the direction they ran off in.

Killian got up and called out Carey and Merle.

“Hold on, what?” Merle asked. He’d apparently not been paying attention.

“C’mon buddy, we might need a healer,” Killian said, and Merle got up, sighing as if he could foresee this was gonna end badly for him, and followed them.

“Taako, sit tight, we’ll be back in a sec.” Said Killian.

“Uhh..”

“In a jiffy!” and they were off. Taako stood there for a second with his hands floating in front of him. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to follow them just so that he’d be with Lup instead of these guys.

“She’ll be fine,” said Magnus as his heavy hand landed on Taako’s shoulder. The first thing that came to mind was Lup slurring ‘Hold on,’ at him through the stone of farspeech as they both died. He shook Magnus off and slumped against a tree, keeping everyone left in the area in his field of vision. He tried to keep his mind on the people still there, and not on the twins’ most recent brush with death.

As he sat his mind went off into the woods after his sister. _He could see her prowling around alone in the_ _trees_ _,_ _waving her umbrestaff at anything that moved._ _The MOM was coming up from where they came, but Barry and his accomplices were coming up from behind._ _Soon enough she was surrounded_ _by a mix of sentients and automatons, all had their weapons drawn and leveled at her. Her staff was swathed in flame as she spun frantically at all of her attackers. The brush was already catching fire_ _and it spread quickly._ _Carey was undeterred and ran at her, knives up. Shadows and thorny vines came to life dispute the fire and_ _flew at_ _her-_

He snapped back into the present. His vision cleared and the clearing suddenly came back into view, as if he had just slipped back and forth between two points in space.

 _They’re doing an escort mission,_ Taako insisted to himself, rubbing his eyes. _If they’re gonna kill us they’ll take us to the queen first._

He looked up and saw the air around them shimmering with one of Lucretia’s wards. He made out Magnus patrolling on the other side of it. Taako only just now realized the guy was restless all the time. Angus was sitting next to him reading a book. Taako skimmed one paragraph of it over the kid’s shoulder. It appeared to be a mystery novel for kids.

“Hey Ango,” he said. Angus looked up at him, mildly annoyed at the interruption, but he looked interested in conversation. “You uh, like being a detective?”

“Yeah,” he said with certainty after a pause. He seemed to think that was an odd question.

“How did that happen anyway? Is this, like, a hobby or something?”

“Hobby?”

“I mean, obvi you’re into detective stuff, but like, and I haven’t read a lot of mystery books for kids, but, isn’t, like, sussing out who cheated at a party game more in you’re age range? Ten-year-olds don’t generally solve murders or track people down for the queen, as far as I know.”

Angus, looking offended at the idea of his skills being relegated to exposing party game cheaters, said; “I mean, I tracked you and Lup down, I’d say I can handle professional detective stuff.”

“Well,” Taako said, not wanting to completely stomp on the dreams of a ten-year-old, “people have followed us and kidnapped or tried to kill us before, so like…”

“But, like, no one the Queen’s hired.”

Taako took a pull from his flask. His facial expression didn’t change.

“And before Lucretia hired me, I had just caught Kyr the Face Stealer.” Angus sat back looking smug.

Taako blinked at him, then said; “Like, was that like—that serial killer? Who went around killing people and then stealing their whole lives for years?” Angus nodded, proudly.

Taako and Lup were lucky enough to never encounter them, not in a life-changing way anyway. Not that there was anything in their life that was worth stealing, that they knew of until a week ago.

“Wow, ok, cool. Still, this brings me back to my original question. Why are you chasing down serial killers when your ten human years old?”

It took a second for Angus to begin his answer. “I started doing it because I wanted to help find people who have gone missing, and,” he started to look uneasy, he thoughtlessly flipped through the pages of his book as he spoke, “a lot of those had ended in murder, and I couldn’t just leave it at that, so I’d end up trying to find the people who did that. My grandpa used to tell me when you’re good at something, you should share it with people.”

“And everyone was ok with you chasing murderers and kidnappers around?”

“My parents disappeared a while ago, and then my grandpa got sick—I was kinda raised by the detectives in Rockport.”

Taako didn’t have a response to that. The last time he and Lup saw their own mother was when she had gone off to get water on a normal sunny morning. They had never thought about their dad that much, she had just told them he died. And anyone who could be considered a parent to them had been vultures. A smart kid like Angus didn’t need to be told that not having an actual parent around sucked, so Taako let the conversation just drop. Angus went back to his book.

And then Lup burst back into the clearing, followed closely by Barry and the trio that had gone after them. They all looked pretty roughed up.

“Aww shit who?” said Lucretia

“Greenwardens and The Wave not far behind,” said Barry breathlessly.

“Ok then,” said Lucretia from behind a facepalm, “we need to get out of the woods like two hours ago. Merle, what’s gonna be the best way out?”

“Alright,” said Merle, “you said there were Greenwardens out there, right?”

“Yeah”

He huffed. “Ok,” he eyed the trees. “This might be a longshot, but-”

“On second thought could we maybe-” Lucretia tried to interrupt.

“I’m just gonna talk to the trees-”

“I _know.”_

“-try and get them on our side.”

“Why is everyone cringing?” Lup demanded of the circle of cringing faces. “Let! Him! Do! His! Thing!” She clapped her hands on every word for emphasis.

The good news was, everyone seemed reluctant to say no to that. Lup guessed they must have been serious about this lost heir thing, but her brain wouldn’t let her think they were being serious about it because she and Taako actually were royalty. The bad news was what came about of her order. Everyone’s issue with the idea of Merle negotiating with the plants became clear when he sauntered up to the nearest tree and caressed it lovingly.

“Hey baby,” he began, his voice getting husky. “I like the feel of your bark under my fingers.”

“Actually, maybe we can-” Lup tried.

“Why are such strong, handsome trees doing conspiring with these Greenwarden punks? Why don’t you-”

“Nope!” Taako yelled. It was possible that their enemies out in the woods heard it he yelled so loud. “Fuck that! Mags cut one of these trees, _I’m_ getting us out of here.” He pulled his wand out and Magnus cheered as he raised his ax.

“Guys, can you not?” Merle hissed, “I’m trying to _befriend_ the trees here.”

“Merle, we don’t have time to fuck trees. Mags I need...” he waved his wand around the clearing to find a suitable tree, he found a fairly thick one that Merle wasn’t trying to get to first base with, “this one here.”

Lup groaned. “You know what, Merle? Keep doing what you’re doing. Whatever gets us outta here faster.”

“Thank you,” said Merle.

“Please don’t.”

“As I was saying, me and my friends here—those druids out there they’re just using you to commit murder. We—I know you don’t know me but trust me, we-”

Merle’s spiel was cut off by the sound of an ax slicing cleanly through a tree and Magnus yelling “Timber!” and Taako whispering “Holy fuck,” at Magnus’s tree felling prowess. The rest of the trees seemed to wilt as if flinching at their friend getting killed.

“Ok, I know that looks pretty bad. My friends here, they don’t get it. They don’t understand the beauty, the majesty of nature like I do. Can you help _me_ out, at least?”

“Merle, get in the boat!” When Merle turned toward Lucretia she and the rest of the group, sans Magnus, were waiting in a boat Taako had molded like clay from the felled tree. Magnus was standing waist deep in the water holding it in place.

“You can fuck a plant on you’re own time, bud. Get in.” As he said that a mage hand extended from him, grabbed Merle and dumped him into the boat. Magnus gave the boat a push downstream before leaping in. The river was wind enough that they were able to get out of the way of any overhanging plants, but they all knew that shaping water was a thing, and kept an eye on the shore and in the water. As the trip down the river wore on, though, it remained quiet.

“So,” said Killian, “not a single one of our friends out there know a water spell, huh?”

 _Finally, something good happens,_ Taako and Lup thought at roughly the same time. Lup lounged into her brother because she was tired and there wasn’t a great amount of space on their raft. An awkward silence fell over the party, punctuated by the lapping of the current against the raft. Lup closed her eyes, but kept her ears open for anything else, becoming increasingly tense the longer she went without hearing anything else. She jumped when Merle broke the silence.

“So, uh, I guess you two have lived a pretty wild life out here, huh?” Neither twin answered. “I’ve been around Faerun myself. It’s a pretty fun place if you put aside the civil strife, and the monsters, and the bad guys that pop up here and there.”

“So what you’re saying is Faerun’s a nice place if you just take Faerun out of it?” said Taako.

“Well you’re not wrong,” Merle replied. “I just try to focus on the pretty places I’ve been, the interesting people I met, the diamonds in the rough, you know?” Taako shrugged. “Where did you two live before all of this?”

“It’s been a while, I forgot,” Taako said dismissively, pulling the brim of his hat down over his eyes. Lup had closed her eyes again and had turned her attention back to what was outside of the boat.

 _Gods, look at them, Rita,_ both twins heard. They both jumped, thinking they heard the voice from behind them, but there was no one behind them, and there was no one on the shore.

“Uhh, did y’all hear that?” asked Taako to everyone else. Everyone gave a concerned shake of the head or shrug.

“Where’d it come from?” asked Lucretia. The twins pointed behind them, and she squinted at the far-off shore.

 _Hey, peas,_ said the voice of their mom. Both nearly jumped to their feet, rocking the boat. “Peas” was what she called the twins when addressing them both at the same time. _I didn’t mean to take as long as I did._

“Guys,” warned Merle, “whatever you’re hearing, it’s probably a trap. There’s something very screwy about this area.”

Lup, who didn’t want to fall into two traps on the same day, did pump the breaks for a second and scanned the woods, briefly sensing some sinister, otherworldly energy before-

 _Is someone out there?! Anyone!?_ Her mom called desperately. It was jarring how frantic how afraid she sounded. And she sounded hurt. _Somebody! Help!_

“Pull over!” Lup demanded. “Pull the boat ashore!”

“Guys, we didn’t hear anything, and that forest is super fucky. We’re not going in there.”

Off into the woods, the twins heard their mom struggling against—something. Taako was already getting to his feet, which, as far as everyone else could tell, wasn’t characteristic of him.

“Guys!” Lucretia warned, and then reiterated “whatever you’re hearing, it’s a trap! If you go in there we might not be able to find you again!”

The twins looked at each other, and without exchanging a word weighed the risks of staying with a group of people they barely knew who was supposed to be escorting them to another complete stranger who was supposedly their aunt and going into the woods to find and rescue their mom. They were in the water swimming to the shore the next second, not heeding everyone else who were demanding they swim the fuck back and get in the boat. And they were running into the woods the second their feet hit solid ground.

As they ran the sounds of struggle got louder, but it seemed to be coming from everywhere. The twins ran in a relatively straight line for a while, correcting their course a little bit now and then, they turned left when they heard yelling from the left, and then turned right when it came from the right, but then it started coming from behind, and as they turned and ran toward it their mother yelled something from behind them again, but they had to be close, her voice was so clear in their ears—and then she was somewhere far off again, but then they were right next to her again, but she was nowhere to be seen-

“Lup! Stop!” said Taako, grabbing Lup by the arm and tripping her up some. She spun toward him, eyes burning, but she’d been giving him that glare for almost 100 years so he felt nothing. He asked breathlessly, “What’s with the trees?”

Before she could retort, her senses actually kicked in, and as far as she could tell they had run straight into another world entirely. Everything was emitting a faint glow. The leaves had a sheen to them that made them look like flakes of bronze and jade, and there were blossoms scattered here and there that were lit up like a candle flame. The trees themselves, along with the rest of the foliage, seemed to be sculpted as they grew out of the ground, twisting around and molded into artwork and nothing a plant would grow into on its own. Even the ground appeared to be a deliberate carpet of moss bordered by clover, which plain wasn’t supposed to happen in a normal forest. She looked up at the sky—and there was none. It was just pitch blackness peaking through the shining leaves. Lup flopped down on a stump, which seemed, suspiciously, about the right height for someone to flop down on tiredly.

“God-” she said, “-DAMNIT!”

Taako flopped down against a tree himself, which had a very convenient notch in it that functioned like a bench. He would’ve liked to have made a snarky comment about how today was probably a teachable one for Lup regarding running into the woods impulsively, but he had been just as dumb as she was so there was no point.

Lup suddenly chuckled in that really tired way one does when a situation leaves them with nothing, not even sadness or anger. “I wonder if the trees here would like Merle.”

“I’d rather die,” said Taako with a straight face. Lup sat down and sighed for a minute, then she looked around the woods, trying to find where they had come from. The ground looked undisturbed, and all she could see where artfully twisted glowing plants one after the other. She cast levitate on herself and jumped, only to crash into an invisible ceiling where the trees topped, and then fell back down into the pillowy soft moss, which she got up and kicked in retaliation for existing, and it immediately repaired itself, not even leaving any derbies from her attack on its visage.

“Right,” she huffed, sitting down in the clover because it seemed like the one way to spite the unnatural forest. “I guess this is supposed to be a pocket dimension or something.”

“Like, someone actually carved out a bit of space-time to trap us in?” Taako said flatly. “I admire their dedication.”

“You think one of them-” she motioned with her head to indicate Lucretia and her ragtag bunch of misfits, “-could stumble in here by mistake and get us out?”

Right as Taako opened his mouth to answer, someone sang; “That isn’t how it works,” from nearby. Whoever they were, they were also playing a harp.

The twins got up at the same time, and, exercising a caution they should’ve exercised before, approached the sound of the harp, which actually stayed in one place and got gradually louder the closer they got. The path lead them into a quaint clearing. Flowers bordered it, there was a small waterfall and a pond, its water seemed to come out of nowhere and didn’t seem to fill up that little puddle at all, and some bushes grew into the shapes of chairs, giving the clearing the appearance of a living room. Sitting in what could be considered a couch was a very tall elvish figure, though their hair and skin bore the same hues as a spring day, and their eyes were solid pupilless spheres of ruby. They were idly plucking a lyre as they watched the twins cross the threshold into the clearing.

“Finally,” said this new stranger, smiling even as the twins leveled their weapons at them. “I was wondering when I’d get to meet Dioner’s Children.”


	10. What if Eladrin were Horrible were part of some kind of Hive Mind?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for the support! I would like to remind my readers that I’m playing very loose with DND lore here (mostly because I know next to nothing about it), so I’m kind of doing what I want with the elves, fey and the related species ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> Also, I'm using the Grammarly plugin now, so any egregious grammatical errors are my own fault for not knowing them and trusting a bot to be my proofreader  
> Edit 11/13/18: added some words b/c I just realized the eladrin never made her offer in the first version of this. Whoops

It had rained the night before, leaving the coarse sand damp and leaving clear pools of water in the dips between hills. The cloud cover was still thick enough to protect the young twins from the oppressive desert sun. The two had splashed around in a pool that had collected not far from their house, which had not yet been broken into. Their mother was still up there, looking a bit like a gargoyle as she watched over them. A nice gargoyle, but a gargoyle nonetheless.

“Turn that rock into two rocks!” Lup had shouted at Taako. They had just discovered magic at that point, and were experimenting with the different schools of magic outlined in their copy of _So, You Think You’re a Wizard?_ Their mother had bought them during their last trip to town.

Taako gave it a shot, pointing a plain mesquite stick wand at the rock. At best some sand had probably flaked off of the bolder. Lup had made fun of him for it, and he retorted by saying he probably got the verbal component wrong before dashing back up to the house to grab the book. Lup followed him up to their cottage, a one-room cube of stone molded and pressed from the sand it stood in, and before they entered, they heard crying through the half-open stable door. They hadn’t known what to expect, but when their mother was upset over something it had to be bad. When they entered she had been sitting in the chair across the room with her face in her hands. When she saw them she wiped her face dry and quickly collected herself.

“Mommy, what’s the matter?” Lup asked, crossing to her and flopping into her mom’s lap before she could get up. Taako did the same but sat on the armrest.

“I’m fine, peas,” she said. Before she could do anything else the twins hugged her, effectively trapping her where she sat.

“Don’t cry, mommy,” Taako had said.

“I’m alright,” Rita insisted. “I was just missing your dad a little, but I’m fine.”

“We have a dad?” Taako asked, genuinely surprised. This did pull some laughter from Rita. She wrapped them both in a warm hug, now resigned to being trapped in her chair by her own children.

After a pause, she took a breath. “You did,” she said. “You’re father died a long time ago.”

They sat for a little while. A veil of melancholy had fallen over this house and the three elves sat together and processed it. Rita held onto her kids tightly for a while, as if afraid to let them go. Once everyone was back to normal she picked them up like a set of kittens, set them on the floor and told them to get back to whatever shenanigans they were up to.

The did, Taako grabbing the book and running back outside with Lup. Rita had gone back to the window to keep an eye on them, Dioner still very much on her mind.

✧*:･ﾟ✧

“Who are you?” Lup demanded to the Eladrin.

“Bold of you to assume a denizen of the Feywild would just give her name away,” she said, placing the lyre in the seat beside her.

“Can you at least tell us who you work for?” Taako asked.

“We don’t ‘work for’ anything,” she said haughtily. “That’s a concept the people of your world came up with.” She reached under the table and plucked a berry. “Why don’t you sit down,” she turned to Lup, who still bore some superficial scratches from the last trap she was in, “you look exhausted.”

“I’d rather go back from where we came,” Lup shot back. The tip of her umbrestaff lit up. She demanded; “How do we get back to the real world?”

“Are you implying our world isn’t real?”

“You live in this pocket dimension trap?” Taako retorted.

“Oh, this isn’t a trap, exactly. It’s more of a buffer between the Feywild and Faerun. The elves that settled in your world erected it to confound and, well, prevent anyone from trying to cross it.”

“Cool. How do we get back to our world then?”

The eladrin folded her hands in her lap. She seemed to be staring them both in the soul at the same time. “Why would you want to go back? How has anyone in that world helped you?”

“We know we can survive there,” said Lup. “We take what we can get.”

“Is that the only reason why you’re still with the other seven?” the eladrin probed.

“Like she said,” said Taako, “If we can get an entourage of badasses to keep us safe for a little while we’re gonna take it.”

“Huh,” the eladrin said. “You two seemed pretty enthused about the connection between your mother and the queen.”

“No…?” said Taako after a second of hesitation. The eladrin just grinned at him. “We’ve been through this con before, we know where it ends. We’re just—like we said—there’s a lot of people out there who want to kill us and these guys don’t, right now, but they probably will, like statistically, but again, another day at the office for us. We’re just rolling with them until they try to kill us or something.” Lup said nothing, as she was making an effort to keep her mind clear. She was pretty sure the eladrin could read minds.

“If you were that suspicious of them, surely a pair of powerful wizards like yourselves wouldn’t have stayed with them.”

Lup groaned. “Look, can we skip the bullshit? Is this a pact thing?”

“You make it sound so sinister”

“Then no.” Lup shot a fireball at the eladrin. It fizzled out inches away from her unflinching face.

“You want me dead just like that, huh? You didn’t even ask how I knew your father.”

“We really don’t care,” said Taako. “Our dead dad’s business is our dead dad’s business.”

The eladrin rested her dainty chin on her dainty hand. “As is your mother’s business?” The twins kept their mouths shut, not wanting to give the eladrin anything more she could use against them. “Judging by the way you rushed in here, I thought you really wanted to see her.”

“Hey! You didn’t answer my question!” Lup yelled. “What’s the offer? Do you want to give us unlimited power for a bit so you can nibble away at our brains? The answer is no regardless. Kay? Kay. Let us the fuck out.”

The eladrin blinked at her, her polite smile faltering a little. “I can’t make that offer to you. I can only lead you to the Court.” She motioned behind her. “Rest assured, no one wants to ‘nibble away at your brain’, or whatever. We’re just trying to reunite the elven races and take back what’s ours. And when the time comes, we think you’d be better off on our side, like your father-” she sighed, as if just now remembering he was dead. “Like anyone would be when those of us in the Feywild come back to your world.”

“Eh,” said Taako. Lup just folded her arms and stared the eladrin down.

“Eh?” the eladrin replied, eyebrows furrowing.

“

You arn’t the first thug to give us the whole ‘the world will end but you’ll be fine if you come under our wing speil. And like you said, we’re powerful wizards.” Taako waved his hand and made sparks fly out of his fingertips for emphasis. “We can handle the end of the world if it’s actually gonna happen. Might even be kind of fun.”

The eladrin sighed, though she didn’t seem to feel one way or another about their response. “You’ll want to keep it in mind,” she said as she collected her lyre and got up. “If you ever change your mind, one of us will be there.” And suddenly the floor fell away, and the twins went with it, crashing into the drab brown brush of a normal forest. The first thing they heard upon reentering the primaterial world was Lucretia announcing; “Found them,” and her crunchy footsteps as she approached.

“Are you two alright?” she said, helping them both up by offering both either end of her staff.

“Never better,” said Lup nonchalantly as she and her brother were pulled to her feet.

“What happened to you guys?” Lucretia asked. “I detected some kind of weird energy here, and now that you two just dropped in out of thin air it’s gone.”

“Some guy tried to trap us in a pocket dimension, but Lup kicked his butt,” said Taako, lying compulsively.

“Pocket dimension, huh?” Lucretia said. “Seems like a pretty big trap to lay for two people.”

“I know, right?” Taako replied. Lucretia kept scrutinizing the forest, trying to find whatever it was that lead her to this spot. Lup looked around as well. Nothing seemed off about this patch of trees anymore. No voices calling for help or anything.

“Uhh, Lucretia?” said Magnus’s voice from the stone of farspeech around Lucretia’s neck. “Where are you guys?”

“Oh right.” She struck the ground with her staff, setting it alight as bright as a small sun. The twins shielded their eyes and heard Lucretia say, “Y’all see that, right.”

“Yeah,” said a few voices kind of nervously, followed by Magnus going, “we’ll be right over.” Soon enough everyone had trudged over to their location and Lucretia shut her light off.

“Great,” said Lup, seeing that everyone was present and accounted for. “Hopefully there was no one else in the woods who saw that.”

“Hopefully,” Lucretia replied flatly. “Let’s get moving.” As the party started back from where they came, Lup shot a look at Taako. The one that said; ‘We need to talk about this later.’ Taako nodded, and the two fell in step with the group.

And the group headed back to their boat, and after finding no one else in the area, got back on and went on drifting down the river.


	11. Dirty Family Biz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone. I'm starting a new job tonight and I wanted to finish this up and post it before I have to leave. Thanks again for reading!  
> Ps: for the purposes of this fic, Merle's a stoner and I'm differentiating between Necromancy and Umbremancy (I think they're in the same category in DND lore, Idk I'm going off one source I can't be bothered to find again)  
> 12/18/2018: forgot the worldbuilding expo again. whoops

They made it out of the woods in the middle of the night. They wouldn’t make it to Rockport until the next day. Everyone just threw their tents down and the twins went into their own without a word to anyone else.

“So how was that?” Taako asked Lup once they were alone. “Did you kill anyone? Did you go buck wild?”

“No, Barry stopped me,” she said flatly. “How’d you do, while I was in the woods making sure no one was following us?”

“I did fine. I chose to stay _away_ from whoever was following us.”

“Yeah, you did,” Lup conceded icily, “Right up until you ran into that eladrin’s—whatever she called it, right next to me.” Taako pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. Lup said, in a softer tone; “Are we gonna discuss any of that?”

“I mean, my biggest takeaway from that is don’t follow the voice of our mom into the woods, apparently.” Neither of them were ok with that. “You think it was the same Dioner?” Taako asked after a pause.

“Sure, why not?” Lup threw her hands in the air. “He could’ve been some grunt on her level. Another missionary of ‘The Court’ or whatever. You sure we wanna be on their bad side when they come over and start doing whatever they’re gonna do?”

“Would you trust strange women who lure you into, well she didn’t call it a pocket dimension, let’s call it a transitory dimension, by making you think your dead parents are talking to you, and offers you a big ol’ pitcher of Fantasy Kool-aid?”

“No, I’m just saying, we don’t know who these people are and maybe we should’ve tried to not antagonize her, who’s now gonna take that to her boss who will be subsequently antagonized by us.”

“I can’t believe you’re lecturing me about being civil when you tried to kill her.”

More silence. Lup didn’t want to give her brother that one.

“You think Ceresel had anything to do with them?” Lup questioned.

“I don’t know. She didn’t really come up back there.”

Lup looked at him. “Do you trust Ceresel?”

Taako thought about it, or his brain crashed at what could be a call-out and he just stared at her. After a moment he said; “I don’t know her. I—We know our mom, and she knew Ceresel, or at least took a photo with her that one time, dressed in fancy armor and looking like she was gonna kill the cameraman if he got any closer. It’s more a manner of—like, trust by association? But if our dad was up in some sketch business with the Feywild then—then that’s a penalty, on her. I guess...”

“What do you think of these guys?” Lup asked, gesturing to the outside. Taako shrugged.

“No one’s really gotten my hackles up, yet. Everyone’s just kind of-”

“-Nice.”

“Yeah...”

The tent got quiet.

“Everyone’s nice at first,” Lup pointed out ruefully. Taako nodded. “Do you think, if Ceresel just outsourced this thing to her chancellor, and she just hired a bunch of randos—I don’t know, maybe some of these guys are honest about the whole royalty thing and some of ‘em aren't.”

“We probably don’t have to worry about the kid.”

“Yeah, unless he’s a shapeshifter or something.”

“W-we’ll cross that bridge if we get to it, Lup.” He twirled his hair anxiously. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“You wanna snoop?”

“I wanna snoop.” Taako tossed his hat aside, and took off some of the more jangly bits of his outfit, leaving them on the coffee table before they both exited.

It was pretty quiet outside. They both could see the faint glimmer of Lucretia’s magic as she went around the campsite. They both knew Magnus, Barry, and Killian had scouted ahead a bit, and everyone else was sleeping in their tents, with the exception of Merle, who had set up a beach chair and was smoking something outside of his. Taako waved Lup back inside before approaching Merle.

“Whaddup, uhh, buckaroo...?” said Taako, actively drawing Merle’s attention away from Lup, who dashed toward Lucretia’s royal blue tent once she was in the clear.

“Whaddup?” Merle replied enthusiastically. “You two holding up ok?”

“Sure. Lup’s having a nap.” He pointed his wand at the ground and molded himself a chair from the dirt. He sat down next to Merle.

“What happened to you two anyway?” Merle asked. “You two gave us all a heart attack when you ran into the woods.”

“We were fine. We’re adults, we didn’t encounter anything we hadn’t seen before.” He hoped Merle couldn’t tell that he was lying. If he did, he didn’t acknowledge it.

“Well, what was in there?”

“They were like, a soothsayer? Saying, like, soothes? About the end of the world or something, you know, dime-a-dozen cult shit.”

“In a pocket dimension in the woods?”

“I dunno man they were weird.” He sat back. He joked; “How about you, you recovering from your ‘heart attack’ ok?”

Merle chuckled. “Yeah, I’m good.” He took a pull from his bowl. He offered it to Taako, who took it after a moment of hesitation. He could honestly use the high right about now, and he didn’t feel like he was in immediate danger at this point. He leaned back and looked toward the city on the horizon across the foothills. The open sky was saturated with stars. It reminded him a bit of his home way back in the desert 100 years ago, which he’d rather not think about anymore. He was probably feeling nostalgic now because he’d been forced to think of his mother a lot these past couple of days. He hated getting sentimental. He took another long pull from the bowl before he heeded Merle’s request and handed it back.

“You look sad,” Merle said.

“I’m always sad,” said Taako. “Being the target of assassination attempts and shit your whole life will do that.”

“Yeah.” Merle pulled from the bowl thoughtfully. “You’ll probably get less of that in the castle, behind the walls and guards and whatnot.”

“Yeah. I’m counting on that. That, like, buffer zone between us and everyone who wants us dead.” Taako’s face skewered sourly. “Provided none of them are _in_ the castle already.”

“I doubt it. Since her brother died Ceresel has, understandably, been a stickler for security.”

“And yet she outsourced finding us and getting us to relative safety to her chancellor and a bunch of randos?”

“Not completely.” He said. “She came to me first, and I helped her screen these guys while she was getting them together. I actually knew her grandmother back when she was the chancellor.”

“Were you, like, a royal chaplain or confessor or something?”

“Nah. I didn’t want to get stuck in a castle for the rest of my life. I just met Miranda at a solstice party a little after I left my hometown, and we kept in touch. I’d even be allowed to visit her and her family for a little while, before the whole of Faerun dissolved into a massive clusterfuck. Things were a lot calmer back then.” Merle sighed.

“You called Faerun ‘fun’ earlier today,” Taako pointed out.

“I mean it is, I get exhausted with it at times, but I figured out where to find the fun nowadays.” He repacked his bowl. At this point, Taako felt fuzzy, but extremely chill, and he decided to make himself comfortable in the cool grass.

“Hey Merle,” he said, “you think Faerun will ever stop being fucky?”

“I sure hope it does, I got kids.”

“Oh really?” Taako rolled over and propped his chin up on his hands.

“Yeah,” he said proudly. “My daughter just turned 12, and my son’s seven.” He pulled out his wallet and passed it to Taako, proudly showing off a photo of himself, a dwarven woman, and what looked like a toddler and an infant.

“Jeez,” said Taako, “dwarf children are tiny.” Merle laughed at him.

“That uh,” he seemed ashamed suddenly. “That’s an old picture.” Taako hummed and handed the wallet back to Merle, who shoved it back into his pocket. “Anyway, to answer your question, I hope things cool down again, I just don’t see what it’s gonna take to make that happen.”

“So, why get yourself in the middle of _this_ then?” Taako asked, gesturing at himself.

“I wanted to help a friend of mine out, mostly.”

Taako shrugged. He guessed that sounded reasonable. Or maybe Merle was just hiding his bullshit behind sentimentality. Taako wasn’t sure. He could figure it out tomorrow once his head cleared.

Magnus appeared in his peripheral vision. The other three he returned with broke off in the directions of their tents and Magnus approached Taako and Merle.

“’Eyyy Mags!” Taako said. “We were getting high and talking about our feelings. You want in on this?”

“Do I!?” Magnus yelled.

While all this was happening, Lup was in Lucretia’s tent flipping through her many journals. There was roughly three years worth of entries written out in dated and time stamped bulleted lists written out as objectively as possible, all of them detailing Lucretia and the queen’s search for the twins. She had written in excruciating detail about the leads she chased, their party as she recruited each person and her interactions with her enemies. On more mundane days she even documented details like the weather. Lup cringed at the fact that she didn’t know to refer to the twins as ‘a boy and a girl’ until about 8 months ago.

Lup jammed the last journal back on the shelf where she thought it was supposed to go and started searching the desk, which was largely stuffed with stationery, maps, and intercepted letters. Things that’d help track the twins down. She shut the drawer and moved onto the bedside table, and immediately found a pen and a smaller, more beat-up journal in the drawer. She cracked it open to where it was bookmarked, an entry she had made last night.

_We haven’t had any major problems since the spiders incident the other day. The twins continue to play along with this whole thing, but I know Lup is trying to find a way to get away from us as fast as possible, and that Taako’s own friendliness is a front. He never seems to interact with anyone but his sister unless he has to._

_Given their history, I should probably be grateful they actually decided to stick around, but at the same time, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. There’s nothing keeping them here but trust, and I don’t think I gave them a lot to go on._

_I checked with Ceresel. She hasn’t received a call from either twin yet._

Lup flipped back to the previous entry, which was dated for the night before that.

_I’m pretty sure Magic Brian found us. I let Ceresel know, and she was about as irate as I was. I wish I knew who he’s working with (if he’s with anyone at all) or what his plan is._

_Ceresel ordered that we change course, but that’d take us at least a day out of the way if we’re lucky. I’m really not comfortable leaving everyone out in the open any longer than I already have to, especially not Taako and Lup._

There was another entry timestamped for the very early morning after;

_Fuck it, we’re staying the course. I’ll deal with whatever Ceresel has to say when we get back._

Lup flipped back to the day they were found.

_Alright._

_Thankfully, the ‘find the twins’ part of our operation is done, and no one died permanently which is always a plus._

_Although, neither of them is altogether thankful for us saving them. They’re suspicious of us, which is understandable, considering that everyone has tried to kill them up to this point._

_That portrait Ceresel gave me seemed to calm them down for the time being, but I don’t think it matters whether they believe Ceresel is their aunt or not. I feel like they’re ultimately going to go with what they think is the safest option. And if they decide going it alone is safer than going home, they’re gonna go it alone._

_I can give them Ceresel’s number. Hopefully they’ll keep talking to her, and will come to like her._

She skimmed some of the older entries, finding more of the same. As far as Lup could tell, she was honestly working for the queen, but she seemed more interested in protecting the two of them, and she seemed to think the best way to do that would be getting them back to Castle Amadon. If Lucretia knew anything about her dad’s, and possibly the rest of her family’s, connection with the Fey Court, she didn’t mention it here.

Lup heard Lucretia’s distinctive voice outside, and she shoved the journal under the pillow and fled toward the entrance and peeked out. Lucretia was approaching. Lup ducked back inside, scanning for another way out. She found a vent near the floor and crawled out through that before ducking into the nearest tent.

She found herself in a sea of clutter. The bed in the corner was roughly the same one Lup and Lucretia had in their tents, and it stuck out among the beat-up furniture and crates that had been stacked into bookshelves or shoved against the wall and piled with junk that could be used as components for spells. There was a fuckton of books crammed onto the makeshift shelves along with a mix of dried flora, bones and dead things in jars. There was a subtle energy in this tent that wasn’t too different from the feeling Lup got when she’d pass through a graveyard. There was an empty beat-up chest against the wall which Lup guessed was some kind of box of holding. She assumed this was Barry's tent, given the whole tired hedgewitch aesthetic. For some reason, there was an old upright piano in the tent. She hadn’t heard anyone playing anything since she’s been with this group.

Despite the clutter, there was enough floor space that she could comfortably cross to the old, beat up desk. The cushioned desk chair she flopped into also looked and felt fairly new. There was already a journal from a wizard that, based on how damaged the pages were, was probably long dead open in front of her. There were notes scribbled in the margins like; _You used powdered ruby where you should’ve used powdered silver, that’s why_ _the ritual_ _didn’t work,_ at which Lup chortled and thought; _RIP dude_ _._ She flipped through the books piled on the desk. There were some books on necromancy, though she decided that Barry wasn’t quite as into them as he was with the books on shadow magic since he had written a lot less notes in the former.

A thick stack of papers fell out of the oldest necromancy tome as she flipped through it. All of these papers were new by comparison, though a pamphlet, which was a copy of one Lup and Taako themselves got from the MOM decades ago, was torn up and stained, as if it had been used as a coaster more than once. She slipped that back into the book and flipped through the other papers. The first was a letter. It’s handwriting was far different from the notes in the books, though Barry had scribbled some of his own commentary into the letter as well.

_Dear Sildar,_

_I hope everything is alright back home. Alwin and I have been enjoying ourselves out here in Neverwinter, even though most of it’s been taken up by this conference. It’s mostly been talking, I doubt you’d be into it very much. I’m afraid I can’t bring you back any juicy information about ghosts or outer planes or anything. Those things haven’t come up here. Don’t worry. If something weird comes up, I’ll bring it back to you._

_With love (please stay out of abandoned houses until we get back),_

_~Ealdous_

Barry had written in notes like; _This was a fucking MOM conference, wasn’t it?_ And, _What_ did _they bring up, Aldi?_ There were a few more letters from Ealdeous which had the same vague wording to them, though there was one telegram that just read;

_Everyone leave. Now. I fucked up. If this telegram gets to you before the MOM does, run. They’re coming for you._

_I’m sorry._

_Ealdous_

Lup put the letters aside, a familiar sense of dread hanging over her. At the very least, Ealdous was able to warn Barry—or was it Sildar? And the rest of the family before the worst happened.

She flipped to what appeared to be multiple pages torn from a journal, which were also in Ealdous’s handwriting. None of them were dated.

 _Our leaders aren't convinced that the elves ruling Faerun would protect us from the fey. I feel like no one would know more about the fey than people descended from the fey, but the operative word is ‘would’ and not ‘could’. I_ would _like to reserve judgment until I can do some more digging myself, but then again, I haven’t been at this for very long, so what do I know?_

 

_I was able to get those files to Solomon, but he hasn’t shared anything about what’s in them with me. Says it’s a need to know sort of thing. I got those files directly from an ex-confidant of the queen. This guy tells me I’m just a delivery man and whatever I need to know, they’ll tell me. It seems like the kind of thing everyone would need to know about right away! What’s the deal, Solomon?_

 

_Alright. I found some things out after breaking into a Starchildren op. Apparently, someone in the royal family has been making deals with the Archfey. I didn’t get a whole lot of detail. Starchildren have a very annoying habit of writing everything down in code that they I guess like to make up on the fly. I couldn’t even tell if the queen is the warlock, if it’s someone else or everyone in the damn castle._

_I delivered the journal to Solomon, along with the best decoding of it I could do. This was an information-gathering job, so he didn’t give me that need-to-know nonsense this time. Then again, all I got from him was a ‘thank you’._

 

_We picked up two more mages today. A pair of elf wizards, apparently, a boy and a girl. Solomon seemed really enthusiastic about this two in particular for some reason._

 

_They’re the queen’s niece and nephew! And they let them into the MOM! I told them that myself and they just brushed it off!_

_Is their plan to just start letting warlocks into our house now? So much for the Raw Magic Potential of mortals, I guess._

_Someone’s gonna have to put a stop to this. Might as well be me._

That was last journal page. Lup and Taako had never actually had an attempted murder experience while with the MOM. None that they knew of, anyway. The MOM must’ve got Ealdous before he got to her and Taako.

There was the flapping of thick canvas behind her and she spun around to see Barry at the entrance of his tent—which she was now snooping around in.

“Uh—Hi Lup?” said Barry, already looking a bit pale. “Wh—What are you doing in here?”

Lup dropped the stack of papers on the desk and leaned against it. The old desk swayed under her weight. “Snooping,” she said, not bothering to lie because it was pretty obvious she was snooping. “You have some dirt on my family.”

“Those weren't mine,” he insisted, pointing to the stack of papers next to her.

“Yeah, I know. That doesn’t look like your handwriting.” A part of her was regretting not bringing a weapon with her, but Barry seemed hesitant to start a fight, and instead, seemed to want to talk about it. “Who’s Ealdous?”

He said hesitantly; “He was my brother.”

Ok. That seemed obvious to her now that he pointed it out. “So, is ‘Barry’ just an alias or…?”

“I prefer it honestly. Why are you-” He put his face, which was scrunching up in distress, in his hands.

Lup actively tried not to feel bad for him. She didn’t know if he was worth it or not. “Ealdous tried to kill me and Taako.” Barry crossed the room and flopped down onto his bed. He dropped his glasses beside him as his fingers ran into his hair.

“I was never with the MOM,” he said.

“Yeah, looks like it, I guess. You seem alright with us and the queen anyway. Why else would you be here?” she probed.

“I’m smart enough to realize a bunch of uppity wizard and sorcerers aren't gonna do anything against the pure chaotic energy of the fey.”

“That’s supposed to be the queen’s job?”

“Yeah, I guess? Unless what-” he gestured at the notes, “-I didn’t know about that stuff until I read Ealdous’s notes. I mean I heard the creation myths and the stories about the elven people's ancestors and their whole schism when they came into this world, of course, and every wizard has at least heard of the feywild, but I didn’t know about—what your family was doing.”

“Well, I don’t know what the hell my family’s deal is, so that makes two of us.”

“I mean, no one really knows. It’s possible that about the archfey and your family was just some BS that my brother ‘read’ in a journal, and he mistranslated and took it too seriously.”

Lup bit her tongue thoughtfully. “I don’t think Ceresel had anything to do with that, so if that’s what you’re concerned about you don’t have to worry about her.” She was confident about that since the eladrin implied that the only person who was willing to play ball with the ‘archfey’ or the court was dead now.

“What makes you say that?”

“Me and Taako ran into someone from the feywild earlier today.” She said; “It wasn’t a big deal,” at his shocked face.

“You met someone from the feywild and they didn’t kill you?”

“Course not. Me and Taako are tough, we only died once.”

Barry saw right through her flippant reply. “What’d they tell you?”

Lup blinked. “Oh, she was just like, ‘Ahh, the queen’s such an asshole. We’re gonna take over the world. BEWARE! That sort of thing.” She only told a half-truth. The only time her aunt came up was so the eladrin could taunt her and Taako.

“She didn’t offer you anything?”

“Nah...” Lup lied completely. “She was like ‘you guys stink of Faerun too much. Begone thots,’ and threw us back into this world.”

Barry hummed, clearly not believing her 100%, but he left it at that. He just asked; “Can I have those papers back?” Lup handed the papers and the book they were hidden in over to Barry. He looked at the papers almost mournfully as he arranged them neatly and then shoved them back into the book.

“Do you think Ceresel’s playing ball with the c—Archfey or whatever he called it?” She moved out of her way when Barry came over to the desk to re-shelve the book. It took him a second to answer.

“I don’t think so,” he said, though his answer seemed noncommittal. “I’ve only talked to her once. Lucretia and Merle know her better, and I doubt they’d be working for her at all if she was.”

Lup had to agree. She couldn’t come up with a reason why either of them would be ok with that. “What _are_ you getting out of this, then?” she asked. “Aside from the world not ending, maybe? Is that what me and Taako are getting-” she waved her arms in a big, tired gesture, “-all of this?”

“No. Maybe? If my brother’s to be believed the royal family is holding the line between their world and ours, but, I dunno,” he said. “I, personally, just wanna get the MOM off my back.”

“’Cause you stole their secrets?”

“I stole my brother’s secrets anyway.” He put a kettle on a tiny wood-stove she had failed to notice earlier and magically lit it up. “Two of them got caught up with the MOM years ago, and ultimately died. Ealdous kept all of those notes hidden at home. Long story short, the MOM came after the rest of the family and we had to go into hiding and—I kinda lost track of them years ago.”

“Did Ceresel offer to help track them down?” Barry shook his head.

“She offered ‘protection’. Frankly, I’ll take whatever gets me away from the MOM and lets me sleep someplace that isn’t a cave.”

“Potentially life-saving, but vague promises seems to be her preferred payment method.”

“I wouldn’t know. But when I ran into Lucretia she offered me actual money for this, said the queen could give me whatever amount I asked for. I didn’t take the offer until I told the queen herself about my situation and got her word that I wouldn’t have to worry about the MOM again.” The kettle screamed. Barry put the fire out and dropped some tea leaves into an awaiting pot. “You want some?” he asked, turning to Lup. She got up to leave.

“Sorry for snooping around in your biz,” Lup said as she made her way to the exit.

“I get it.” He said shrugging. He sat down at his desk once the chair was no longer occupied.

Lup exited, seeing that Taako, Merle, and Magnus had ended up in the grass utterly fucked up on whatever Merle had been smoking. Magnus was audibly crying over how great Julia was. Taako appeared to be sleeping, but he looked up at her when she crouched next to her.

“You ready to go to bed?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said, but didn’t move. She took the hint and roughly slung him over her shoulders, and as she turned back to their tent she heard the angry flapping of another thick canvas. She found Lucretia standing at the entrance of her tent, her face set in an expression of tranquil fury.

“Alrighty, which one of you plastic rhinestones read my diary?” she announced, her voice staying in her usual calm tone, though she was audibly about to go off on whoever it was that read her diary.

“Night everyone!” Lup said to no one, really, as she dragged Taako back into their tent.


	12. Open the Vents

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone. Sorry for not posting in a while. Here's a short scene that'll lead us into the next chapter

Lup was roused from her meditation early in the morning when Lucretia poked her head in, telling her they needed to pack up and get moving as soon as they could. When she left, Lup went to wake up Taako.

“Hey hey bro bro, we gotta go,” she said, shaking him. His eye flickered open and he blinked at her blankly as his brain booted up. “You only got like five minutes to get dressed dude, you better make the most of it.” She pulled him upright by the wrists.

“Are you still in your fucking dirty river clothes?” he asked drowsily. She looked down and she was still, indeed, in the t-shirt and britches she was wearing when she jumped in a river, got caught in two separate traps and crouched in a bush the day before. They were pretty torn up and had a lot of earthy stains on them.

“Yeah? And?”

“Fuck sis,” Taako huffed, getting out of bed with a sudden burst of energy. “You’re not getting on a train looking like a bog mummy.” He opened the wardrobe flicked through the clothes within and then threw an outfit at her, a pair of slacks and a collared shirt with similar embroidered thorny roses on them.

“That’s like a day away, but ok,” she said as she peeled off her admittedly very sticky garments. Taako had pulled out a few dresses and quickly looked them over before settling on a regal purple velvet one with belled sleeves.

“You want in on any of this?” he asked as he hooked several earnings into his ears. They looked heavy, and they dangled down to his shoulders, shimmering in the dim light as if daring an unscrupulous other to grab him by his earware.

“I’d rather not,” she said while buttoning up the shirt.

“Oh wait!” he said suddenly. “Did you find anything while snooping?”

“Yeah. Lucy’s honestly working for the queen, but she’s not into Ceresel’s micromanaging. She seems ok.” She chewed over her next point. “The MOM also wants to kill Barry cuz he has some dirt on them.”

“Shit. What kind of dirt?”

“That one of his brothers tried to kill us because someone in Castle Amadon is a warlock.”

He stopped fiddling with a choker at that. “You mean, maybe, our dad being in a pact with the eladrin creep’s court?”

“Well umm—He, the brother, kept journal entries and he found something alluding to _someone_ in the royal family made a deal with the Archfey which, I mean, it might as well be our dad and the Court. That’d just fit in with everything else that’s happened in our lives wouldn’t it.”

“...Ok.” He had given up on the choker and replaced it with a scarf. “I mean dad’s dead. Was it just him or is the court the shadow government behind the throne or…?”

“The dude was vague. Like the entries just alluded to one person who could be in a pact with some big Fey entity, and he translated it from a Starchild journal so...”

“So he could’ve just mistranslated it.”

“Yeah. Maybe he misunderstood and the Court _is_ the royal family.”

“I was gonna say maybe the whole thing is bullshit but ok,” Taako said dismissively.

“I mean, that’d be nice, we’d just get to go home, get our fairy tale ending before accepting the responsibilities of being the prince and princess of the world, and that creepy eladrin was just trolling us and she’ll never show up again.”

“Lup,” Taako rubbed his eyes, “I’m really tired, can we worry about the faeries trying to take over this world while being stuck in another dimension later?” Lup squinted at him, her gaze suddenly sharp as knives.

“Taako, are you buying this?”

“The warlock thing? Not really, to be honest.”

“Not that—But you buy the lost heir thing then?” He stopped as he went to put his hat on. After a hesitant second, he turned to her.

“I don’t buy it hook line and sinker,” he said, putting the hat on. Lup didn’t believe him. “But c’mon! Mom knew the queen, I think we’ll be fine.”

“You don’t think she was in on it?”

“In on what? Specifically?” Before she had a chance to answer he added; “and we were hid in the desert for like 7 years, how could she be in on it?”

Lup sighed very loudly so as to communicate her exasperation. “How far are you gonna take this con?”

“You want the truth?”

“Yeah. What is the truth?” She put her hands on her hips.

“I’ll take this _con_ all the way to the castle and into the grave if I can.” It was clear to Lup that Taako was no longer thought of their part in this as a con.

“Cool. That shouldn’t take long if you’re just gonna roll with whatever those guys out there say.”

Taako stuck his head into the hanging garments and groaned as loudly as one could. He turned back to Lup, taking a deep breath.

“Lup,” he began. “Sis, I love you and I respect your opinions, but not everything is a trap, alright?”

“What makes you so sure all of this isn’t a trap?”

“What’s more likely? that The Archfey Court would just let a human loose in the world and hire, among others-” he counted off on his fingers, “-A big strong dummy who loves his fiance too much to handle, a dad—Merle has two kids, and he’s bad at it—and a ten-year-old to find two specific nobodies and then try to lure them away from that very team through an interdenominational rift in the woods, or that our mom knew the queen—we have a picture of the two of them together—and the queen is trying to get us away from our mutual enemies?”

Lup rubbed her temples. When he put it like _that,_ the Court’s plan did sound completely bonkers. “Well then why did mom run away and all but pretend our dad didn’t exist in the first place?” she demanded in turn. “If we’re _so_ much safer with the queen what were we doing out in the desert? And why would she keep Prince Dad a secret?”

“Why are you so paranoid? Can’t you just take this as a gift from the universe?”

“You’re calling me paranoid? After everything we’ve been through? How are you still this gullible?”

The tent door flapped behind them, and Lucretia poked her head in again.

“If you two are ready, we’re about to get moving,” she said.

“Lu, can you—can you give us a minute?”

“Really can’t.” She sounded annoyed, and even though she was telling them to do something there was an undertone of ‘I know I’m technically beneath you don’t worry’ that just infuriated Lup. Lucretia was gone as soon as she came.

“Anyway,” said Taako, “I didn’t realize it was ‘gullible’ of me to weigh the evidence we have and make a decision based on that, but yeah, I guess I am the idiot for trusting anything to go our way anymore. Can we just pack up?” He headed toward the chair their bags were set on, but Lup cut him off, and dug her things out of the Oh Shit bag and into the other green bag Lucretia had given them.

“I’m sorry,” said Taako, “are you gonna run away without me?” Lup stopped and rounded on him.

“Why would you say that? I just need some space.”

“Alright, fine, you can have some space if I’m suffocating you so much.”

“I wasn’t asking.”

“Fine!”

“Fine!” Lup slung the bag over her shoulder, nearly clocking Taako in the process, grabbed her umbrella and stormed out, leaving Taako to seethe by himself in their room.


	13. Appropriately Ch 13 is where things start to go bad

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok I'm gonna be real with you folks. I'm not liking my writing lately so I just decided to finish this chapter so I could move on. I'm gonna try and finish this thing, but between the the job and the aforementioned writers block it might take a while. Thanks again for reading :)

Most of the party was thrilled to be out of the wilderness and back in a city. Lup was at least grateful for the easy terrain and the clear line of sight. The crowds were a downgrade, though. Any one of these people could drag either Lup or Taako away if she didn’t keep an eye out. The queen’s chancellor’s independent contractors surrounded the twins, which she should’ve regarded as a kind of shield between them and any assailants, but she felt like she was in a cage.

Taako was watching her out of the corner of his eye, and she was still ignoring him. She had a whole day to get over herself, and here she was still on her ‘I’m mad at you so you don’t exist’ act. He knew he just needed to wait it out, though he’d never admit out loud that her being emotionally unavailable was as terrifying to him as being on his own. He exhaled forcefully, hoping she could hear how mad he was right now.

They reached the central train station, pushing through the glass doors into a warmly-colored, cavernous concourse. Tides of people ebbed and flowed under it’s vaulted ceiling, entering and disappearing into arched passageways. Half the group paused, paralyzed in the enormous, but crowded and chaotic space. As they all tried to figure out which way to go they were intercepted by a small group of strangers who looked like they wanted to blend into the crowd but still wanted the more observant people to eye them suspiciously. The group all mentally prepared to throw down as they approached.

“Lady Chancellor,” said the tall woman in front, giving Lucretia a small bow along with her partners. When she straightened up she opened her coat revealing the olive branch and sun sigil. “Queen Ceresel sent us.”

“Oh. You guys got here quick” said Lucretia. She turned back to the group and addressed the twins in particular. “Your aunt just told me about them last night.”

Lup approached them, sizing each one up. She offered the leading lady her hand, and when she took it Lup gave it a hard squeeze.

“You know me and my brother,” she said, “but we don’t know you.”

“Of course, ma’am,” It was possible that she was putting off the “your Highness” and whatnot because they were in public, and their motley crew already drew enough attention wherever they went, but Lup still felt something was off.

_Something’s always off, ain’t it?_ She thought.

“I’m Lady Mia Pitri of the Queen’s royal guard-” she gestured to the two behind her, “-this is Pearle Hebert and Ceri O’Callaghan. We were sent to escort you on your ride to Neverwinter—And that’s all the time we have, let’s get moving. Our platform is this way.” She turned and led the group into a crowd flowing into a long passageway.

“You’re just gonna keep changes of plan to yourself, huh?” Taako said to Lucretia.

“You’re aunt suggested we take a detour. I said that’d slow us town too much. I guess this is her plan B,” she replied, then led the group behind Mia.

Taako decided to accept that as an answer, not really having the energy to get into that. He looked over at Lup, who was watching the three newcomers. He relaxed a bit, knowing he could still trust her to keep an eye out even as they were beefing at each other. His eyes wandered around the passageway, which had been built from many, many rocks of wildly varying sizes and colors fitted together. It looked like many technicolor spiderwebs were stretched across the arched tunnel. The squad reached their platform and crossed, passing a handful of sleek locomotives to the one they were supposed to catch. They entered the car at the end of the line, a sleeping car which made Lup claustrophobic just looking in to.

“Kinda small, isn’t it?” Taako asked, voicing Lup’s thoughts. He looked around the car. At least it had a bathroom.

“It’s what we got,” said Mia dismissively. “I didn’t wanna start a whole _thing_ with the conductor. Everyone get comfortable, we’re gonna be in here a while.”

“We can’t even step out to the dining car?”

“Queens orders, no one’s to leave this car. We’re getting our meals brought to us.”

Lup immediately went to the far end of the car, leaving Taako at the door.

“Right. You’re still gonna try and get some space in here,” he said loudly. Lup didn’t respond. “Good luck in this fucking clown car I guess.”

“Just stay in you’re fucking spot and we’ll be fine.” Lup replied in kind. Everyone else pretended to go about finding their own space in the tiny car but a fog of awkwardness had permeated the car.

“Ok, so you’re not gonna be offended by me just being here then?” Taako shot back a bit louder as he threw his bag on the nearest bed.

“You won’t bother me if you’d shut the fuck up!”

“Guys, language,” said Magnus, pointing to Angus, but he was bulldozed.

“Oh so I’m just supposed to keep my pie hole shut until the train ride is over-!?”

“Yeah, that’s what it looks like-!”

“-the whole fuckin’ time between Rockport and Neverwinter?!”

“-I don’t _want_ to stay in the same _car_ as you the _whole_ time! This was the _queen’s_ idea, so that’s what _you’re_ gonna have to deal with when you get there!”

Merle chimed in with; “Guys, hey. What the situation here?”

Both twins simultaneously answered; “As Lup/Taako,” as they went on making their corners of the train car comfortable. No one asked any questions.

Everyone else unpacked enough stuff to make themselves comfortable during the long trip in the cramped car. The group chatted among themselves, save for the twins. They weren't up for conversation.

Not long after that the argument, there was the sound of steam escaping the engine and the train pulled out of the station. The train accelerated slowly, but soon enough they were pulling through the outskirts of Rockport and heading into the foothills. Lup perked up in alarm when Barry approached. He sat down across from her and flipped open a book. Taako had struck up a conversation in his corner of the car, and even though she was mad at him right now, she was surprised at how much his voice grated on her right now.

“This is kinda sudden, isn’t it?,” she said, gesturing at the three guardswomen.. Barry blinked at her, now popped out of his trance. He shrugged and flipped his book closed. “Sorry for interrupting,” she said quickly.

“You weren’t,” he muttered. He seemed out of it and agitated.

“Again, I’m sorry for snooping around in your shit.”

“I-it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” He rubbed his eyes, clearly only about 65% awake.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Listen,” Barry leaned in in that way that made it clear she was about to disclose some private information. “The reason why I took up necromancy in the first place was so I could talk with the dead. The MOM does a lot of murder, as you know, and if someone’s coming after me it’s good for me to know who they are and what kind of magic their using-”

“What’s the piano for?”

That question, of all things stopped him in his tracks. His mouth hung open in confusion. “Ok.”

“I’ve never heard anyone play anything since we’ve been with you guys is all.”

“I, eh, found it in a dumpster—near a dumpster some time ago. I used to play it as a kid, but I stopped because, yeah. It’s not exactly convenient to carry one of them around, not without a box of holding anyway. I’ve been meaning to pick it back up, but, you know, it’s really out of tune, and I think some of the wires are missing, and I’ve been busy anyway. Wasn’t that great at it to begin with...”

Lup nodded. The sentence ‘I played the violin when I was a teenager’ was on the tip of her tongue. The twins were with Lady Heather at the time. As much as she had loved it and jumped into it with great enthusiasm, she couldn’t think about it without seeing herself snooping around the lady’s room trying to find any evidence that their mother actually knew her, only to get caught and thrown in the dungeon, where she sat there with nothing to do but watch the sun rise and fall out of a narrow slit window, waiting…

“Everything alright there, Lup?” She blinked, only then realizing she fell into a trance.

“It’s a little claustrophobic in here, isn’t it?” she said, pushing the dungeon out of her mind. “I bet there’s piano over in the lounge.” She motioned to the door behind her.

“Uhh… I don’t think I want to get on Mia’s bad side.”

Lup leaned in closer, getting into whisper-range of Barry’s face. “You think something’s off about her?”

“It’s more like, this is just really short notice, isn’t it?”

“Honestly this sort of thing isn’t exactly unusual to me,” Lup glowered. “My life is just an endless string of unpleasant surprises, this might as well happen.”

“Yeah, same.”

✧*:･ﾟ✧

Since everyone was sleeping in the same space, Lup decided she could get away with an actual night’s sleep herself. But all she got in exchange for actual sleep was a bad dream.

_She was back in Lady Heather’s prison tower chained to a wall, hands trapped in metal mitts that would burn her hands whenever she tried to channel her fire magic. The air was stale and cold, her one source of light was the thin sliver of sunlight that would pass through the narrow slit window a few hours out of the day. She sat there in a dehydration and malnutrition-induced haze, which she was pulled out of by the voice of Queen Ceresel._

“ _Lup...”_

_Lup didn’t answer, instead turning away from the cell door._

“ _Lup, please, it’s your aunt Ceresel, don’t you recognize me?” she asked in an overly cheery voice._

_Are you kidding me right now? Lup thought._

“’ _Are you kidding me?’” Ceresel asked incredulously, because of course she could read her mind. “C’mon, it’s safer here with me. It’s what your mother-”_

“ _Stop,” said Lup, still not looking behind her. “Why would she want me in a fucking dungeon?”_

“ _Well you don’t have to be in a dungeon. If you accepted my invitation like Taako did I’d let you out.” None of the cheer had left her voice. Lup finally stood up, rounding on her, and finding the eladrin she and Taako met in the transitory dimension. She gave Lup a smile that split her face. “Your dad would’ve been relieved.”_

“ _Where is he?” Lup drew her umbrella on her. The eladrin was sitting at the same coffee table she was back in that medow in the transitory dimension._

“ _You’re dad’s dead, I thought you knew that?”_

“ _Where’s Taako?!”_

“ _He’s fine. I did say we needed powerful wizards, didn’t I? Why won’t you join him?”_

_The coffee table was lit on fire. “Just tell me where he is before I burn this whole place down!”_

“ _I wish I could tell you how to leave,” the eladrin said casually as Lup’s cell caught fire—she was back in her cell and it was on fire. She was gonna burn herself alive in here. “That’s the trouble.” The eladrin left. Lup collapsed, choking on the black smoke of desert flora, and before she knew it she was engulfed in flames._

She woke with a start, eyes darting around the dark sleeper car. She gradually realized where she was and why. The merry band of misfits was bundled up in the other bunk beds and fast asleep, save for Ceri, who swayed gently in her chair as she sipped her coffee, looking within spitting distance from falling asleep. Lup couldn’t find the other two guardswomen they met the day before. 

“Everything alright, your Highne-” Lup put her to sleep with a wave of her staff. She was not in the fucking mood for that princess shit. She threw the pants she was wearing the day before on and went to open the door, stopped, spun and pranced over to one of the bunks. 

“Hey. Hey Barry!” she hissed, shaking him into consciousness. He blinked at her incredulously as he awoke. “I think we’re going through the tunnel.”

“Ok.” Barry got up, rubbing his eyes. “Why are—Are you still feeling claustrophobic?”

“Yeah I guess. I’m gonna get a drink, wanna escort me?”

Barry cleared his throat. “Yeah, I guess? If you’re going anyway I should-”

“Hells yes,” Lup hissed, dragging Barry to his feet. She noticed he was sleeping in his jeans and died for a second. “I need some space and a drink.” She dug into the pocket of her gifted green bag for her pack of lock picks and the two stepped silently out of their own car. Everyone else stayed fast asleep, none the wiser, as they did.

Lup could breath again once they broke into the empty lounge. The bar’s backsplash cast the lounge in dim light colored by the bottles of liquor. The dark furniture could hardly be seen until they found the light switch. Barry blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light, then those eyes darted between the piano and Lup, the latter of which grinned mischievously. Lup vaulted behind the bar, grabbed the bottle of whiskey and poured herself a glass. Barry had sat at the piano and was staring at the keys, looking resentful and not committed to his actions.

“So like,” Lup started, grabbing a second glass, “reading ancient necromancy tomes from dead despots, totally fine, but you’re nervous about breaking into a bar just to play piano?”

“Yeah? A little, I guess?” Barry replied, shrugging and cracking his knuckles, eyes drifting from the keys and the cavewall out the window, which was barely more than a blur of dim dark browns as the train sped on its way.

“This better not be about the princess bullshit,” said Lup, rubbing her eyes.

“It’s—I mean, you did drag me in here.” He clamped his jaw shut and reached for the keys, his fingers involuntarily curling away as he did.

“It wasn’t—It was more of an offer than a demand.” Lup filled both glasses and clambered over the bar with a drink in each hand. “I’m not gonna have you beheaded for refusing to entertain me or some shit.” He took the glass she offered and downed it.

“I only came along because you shouldn’t be running around on your own,” he muttered. Lup huffed at him. “I did say I was gonna get back into it, didn’t I?”

“I mean, if you don’t want to, we got booze so breaking in here wasn’t a waste or anything.”

“Nah.” Barry cracked his knuckles again and straightened up. “Might as well do it now, as long as I’m here.”

“Like I said, this isn’t an order or anything.”

“That’s not what I’m—I just.” He sighed and muttered; “Never mind. I can’t talk tonight.” Lup looked at him quizzically, but said nothing as he softly plinked out some scales, working some kind of muscle memory back into his fingers. Lup quietly pulled up a chair from a nearby table, trying not to disturb him as he shook the rust off.

Finally, he played a cord, than struck out the intro to a bouncy and simple melody. He eased into it, and once he was more comfortable playing he started singing softly, his voice still gravelly. He was more in the zone of playing the song than performing it. Something about it, be it the song itself or the way he was playing it, made Lup feel very much at home in this train car she had broken into with a stranger, made her feel nostalgic for a place out in the middle of nowhere, even as Barry started to sing about some crowded, bustling city. Lup was reminded of the big sky, dust storms, and the blistering sunlight of her own childhood home. Barry’s own homesickness was evident as he sang. His composure wavered a bit, he started to miss notes, even stopping the song entirely to apologize to Lup before starting the measure again. This became more and more frequent, and he became more and more flustered, as he got to the bridge, where he gave up with an exasperated key smash and rested his head in his hands.

“H—Hey! Don’t be sad, that was really good,” Lup said. She was taken aback by her reaction. She felt like she had just been pulled back down to earth from a dreamlike state. She went to take a drink, but when she found her glass empty she went back to the bar and refilled it. She brought the bottle over and did the same for Barry.

“Thanks,” Barry muttered, taking a drink.

“I didn’t mean to make you nervous.”

“It wasn’t that. It was—I was starting to feel homesick is all.” And then he admitted; “And then as I kept messing up I did start to get nervous.”

Neither one said anything. Lup swirled her drink in her glass. She noticed that her throat had closed up as she took a sip.

She was at a loss for words. He had mentioned hunkering down in caves to avoid the MOM the night before, as if that wasn’t at all unusual for him. In retrospect, he had looked so harried and tired every minute she’d been traveling with him. He had taken this mission on little more than the vague promise of “protection”, whatever that entailed.

Lup couldn’t blame him. Always running, never sleeping or letting her or Taako get to comfortable anywhere, sizing everyone up and appraising whether or not she could take them in a fight was normal for her, but that didn’t mean she didn’t hate it, that her unceasing vigilance wasn’t exhausting. She looked up at Barry, his eyes were closed as he processed his own baggage. His cave-dwelling hunted witness lifestyle has clearly taken a toll on him. And Lup didn’t know if she could find the energy to keep hers up either.

“Sorry,” he sighed.

“Don’t be.” she said on reflex. The minute she said that she felt exposed, like she was alone in a large crowd, unarmed and with nowhere to hide. She downed her drink and sprang to her feet. “I mean, this was just, like, a fun—I just needed to get out of the clown car for a bit.” She filled her glass to the brim. She felt Barry watching her.

“Have we made you feel claustrophobic?” Barry asked slowly.

“No,” she lied, squaring her shoulders and mentally re-fortifying herself. No need for him to see her all homesick and tired. “You all have been a delight to—shit...” She realized too late what a terrible lie that was, since she had made it pretty obvious to the whole party that she didn’t want to be there, and that she had literally snooped around in his and Lucretia’s stuff just last night. Who did she think she was, Taako? Barry ran his fingers through his hair, watching her.

“Do you really want to go back to the queen?” he asked. Lup folded her arms in front of her tightly, as if trying to tie herself together with tight knots. She really didn’t know, but she was not about to let her uncertainty come to the surface, though the prolonged silence that followed a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question betrayed her uncertainty.

“What if I don’t?”

His eyes widened a bit, then he stared down at the floor and sighed. “Where are you gonna go?” he asked, as if it was a done deal. Lup bit her tongue.

“We’ll figure it out. Me and Taako have done pretty well for a century.”

“Yeah...” Lup felt a pang in her chest at his tired reply. He sounded resigned to his life as a moving target.

_Don’t,_ she thought,  _you can’t help what happens to him. You gotta look out for you and Taako._

_If he gets the job done and you go to live with the queen, what’s she gonna do for him? For sure?_ She asked herself.

_I could make something happen._

_If the whole lost heir thing is true, and that’s a big If._

_She was close to our mom. A lot of people seem to think so._

_I don’t know if mom liked her that much._

She leaned against the counter mulling the situation over. Being the princess put everything that ever happened to her and Taako in context. But there was a lot of pieces that didn’t fit in this puzzle.

_Ain’t that life, though?_ She huffed at herself.

_How much do you know about Ceresel, really? You_ can  _actually talk to her._

A loud, metallic snap came from the front of the car, yanking Lup out of he musings. Barry, likewise, looked towards the door, alarmed. They saw the rest of the train slowly pull away from them as their car lost speed. As they pulled out their wands and ran to the door a figure pulled themself up, shining eyes staring Lup right down to the ground. Mia popped the door open and swaggered in.

“Oh,” She drawled sardonically, “ _here_ you are.”


End file.
